Hidden in plain sight
by Pascal in Quebec
Summary: Anakin Skywalker & Darth Vader. Two identities that made the galaxy tremble in their own way. Just who did Palpatine think he was to try and reduce the man chosen by the Living Force down to being just a puppet with broken limbs hanging from the twisted wires of the Sith? A mask hides many things, and the Dark Politician should have remembered Anakin's skill at remaking himself.
1. Chapter 1

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

 **Star Wars**

 **ABSTRACT:** Anakin Skywalker  & Darth Vader. Two names resonating with power. Two identities that made the galaxy tremble in their own way. Just who did Sheev Palpatine think he was to try and reduce the man chosen by the Living Force down to being just a puppet with broken limbs hanging from the twisted wires of the Sith?

A mask hides many things, and the Dark Politician should have remembered his Apprentice's skill at changing faces to survive the environment he dwelt in. Slave, junker, monk, paladin, general, son, brother, husband, traitor, heretic, Face of Darkness... Anakin had worn many masks in his life; the black Katarn armor Mask of Darth Vader, dreaded Sith Lord would be no different, no more constricting to his intellect, guile and free spirit than the Jedi robes or slave chip implanted into his spine had been.

Beware Palpatine, Darth Sidious, Dark Emperor of the Galaxy, Bane of those not human! The slave is far craftier than The Master is ever aware, blinded by his ambition and power over others as he is, and even thin flimsy masks hide far more than even the Oracles can divine.

 **PRECISION;** this is not one continuous story so much as a series of vignettes that I will be writing occasionally when the inspiration strikes. I would like to thank the authors of " **Double Agent Vader** " and " **Yes, Lord Vader** " amongst others for the basic idea behind this project.

 **WARNING;** the language level of this one is not too particularly trashy when we consider a story based on starships, pirates, soldiers, law breakers and politicians enough to fill several Death Stars. However, as I always warn people who read my work: this language was pretty much normal in the school yard 30 years ago when I was a teenager. So, how can you have such a thin skin and be part of the same culture on the same continent if this is really that offensive to you? Where did you spend the last few decades, if you can't take a few hard words from the mouths of kids when these words have been around since before World War I?

 **PS;** I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.

 **HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT**

 **Chapter 1; That kretthing hurts!**

 **Musings of the darker kinds**

 _(Star Wars – The Rebel theme)_

 **After the Fires of Mustafar; time unclear**

 **Imperial medical center, quarantine ward #3**

 **Coruscant; Empire Central, the City Planet**

Fire. Sulfur. Brimstone. Lava. Rocks floating on rivers of molten lava. Humans with glowing sticks dancing on the floating rocks, under-lit by the glowing lava. Falling. Pain. Fire. More Pain. Burning alive. Pain beyond reason. Pain beyond screaming. Darkness. Cold, cool soothing Darkness.

Light. Harsh. Cold. Aseptic. Unwelcoming light. Smells of burned meat. Noise of machines badly tuned. Cheap plastics, shoddy metalwork, thin fragile glass. More cold light. More smell of meat charred beyond eating. Pain enough to warp a soul if it weren't already broken, the shattered individual pieces warping even further by depression, twisting from guilt, darkening from genuine remorse that the victim would never live to hear.

" _Anakin. My name is Anakin Skywalker, given to me by my mother at my birth. No matter what happens, no matter what is done, no matter what I have lost, my name was, is, and will always be Anakin Skywalker. I swear this by the Mothers Moons, the desert winds and the sweet water hidden in the crevices of the rocky berms. I am Anakin Skywalker and neither pain, shame nor death will take away what I am._ "

That was the mantra he silently whispered inside his soul, eyes closed and teeth clenched reflexively ever since he awoke abruptly when the emperor's soulless, uncaring med-droids began to cut, debride and excise dead or dying flesh from his body in an effort to save whatever could be. Anakin couldn't shake the feeling the droids had shorted the sedative dosage as he was feeling a lot more than the time his right hand had been replaced almost five years ago, just before he married Padme.

" _I am Anakin Skywalker. I am the son of Shmi Skywalker. I am the pupil of the Masters who raised me at the Temple of Jedi. I am the brother of the beings who followed me in battle. I am the keeper of the younglings at the Temple of Jedi. I am the husband of Padme Naberrie, The Good Queen Amidala of planet Naboo, and father of her children. I am the Protector of the Living Force and the Laws of Galactic Civilization. I am Anakin Skywalker._ "

The depressed, damaged 23 year old could barely breathe, even with the help of the massive machines arrayed around the surgical table so he was glad nobody expected him to speak or even scream anymore. It allowed him the time to marshall his reserves and waning strength to mentally recite the mantras of his Identity and Creed without interruption. It was the closest he had ever come to practicing the quiet _static meditation_ preferred by the monks at the Temple of Jedi. Personally, he was much better suited to _moving meditation_ or even _battle trance_ than anything static.

In any case, given what happened to his physical shell, he guessed he'd be in Bacta for several days so he might as well gather his patience and prepare for a long wait until he was autonomous and mobile again. The end of the pain, that would take the time it did; he was neither hopeful nor displeased that it take little time or longer. He deserved pain for what he had done to his beloved, to the one person he had sworn to never harm or betray. He deserved punishment and accepted what the Living Force dealt him in penance for his Treason and Sins against her love.

" _I am Anakin Skywalker. I take on the Creed of the Sith. I take on the title of Darth amongst the Sith. I take the title of Lord amongst the Imperial Government. I am Anakin Skywalker. I serve the Living Force. I serve the Laws of Galactic Justice. I protect civilization from chaos and anarchy. I will live so that I may serve until my oaths and service are fulfilled. I don the_ **Mask of Vader** _amongst the beings of the Galaxy so that the Force, Law and Civilization be upheld. I am Anakin Skywalker, born a slave who lived a slave but will become free and die free. I promise this to the Mothers Moons, the desert winds and the sweet waters that flow underground, hidden from the greedy hands of the Masters._ "

The being that was brought in damaged and dying as Anakin Skywalker was undone, redone, rebuilt and retooled by the careless hands of unfeeling machines under the burning heinous glare of **The Master** as he tried to feed off the pain, misery, guilt and despair of his Apprentice. However, he only received a jumble of emotions that while certainly dark, did not actually feed and fuel the Dark Side of the Force as he wanted. Somehow, somewhere inside of his soul, the broken lump of flesh still had some hope, some sort of guiding Light to shine on his path towards the Force.

Bah! Pathetic fool! Nothing is greater, more magnificent or all-encompassing than the Dark Side of the Force nor did any Sith or dark being compare to His own Munificence! The Apprentice would be given his title as befit his station by His hand, but he still had much to learn. He had much to suffer, to endure, and then in a blazing inferno of Dark Fyre, to burn anew until only Darkness remained where his soul once was housed.

Sheev Palpatine, Darth Sidious, Dark Emperor of the Galaxy, hater of all non-humans, contemptuous of all droids, exploiter extraordinaire and destroyer unparalleled walked out of the viewing area to seek the small plush office he kept inside the medical center. He needed tea and his legs weren't as sure as they had been before Master Windu dared to turn his own _Sith lightning_ upon him during their fight earlier in the day. Force knew he'd need all his strength to corral young Skywalker when he rose from the butcher's block. The boy was closer to an hyperactive diva than any male monarch, ambassador or governor that Palpatine had ever seen in his career as a life-long politician across thousands of worlds and species! How in Coruscant's seedy underbelly had the Jedi Masters kept him in line enough to not tear apart or burn down their precious Temple? That was a secret technique of the Light Side of the Force he could use right about now!

After Anakin felt through the Force the evil stain of the decrepit old debris leave the area, he discreetly used some low-powered Light-side healing techniques on himself from within. He stabilized his eyes, ears, nose and throat then tried to help his heart and lungs, liver and kidneys and anything else he could still feel connected to his core by nerves or Force threads. Doing this helped the droids in their tasks while also limiting how much butchering they would be doing upon his wrecked frame. As the surgeries progressed, Anakin became certain he was being short-changed by his old mentor who was now showing his real face for the first time.

 **Anakin was nobody's fool.**

He knew just how useful a tool he was, first to Wattoo, then the Jedi and now the nascent Empire. For a select few, he may even be seen as a full person and a decent ally in certain circles of society. But he needed an ion cannon blast to the skull in order to believe he would ever become anything else in Palpatine's rheumy yellow eyes than a retched inferior; a prized servant at best or a costly inefficient slave at worst. And Anakin had seen in Tatooine's sandy streets what was done to service beings who were no longer useful or serviceable. They were either killed for their spare parts like droids or sold off for animal feed like the Hutts often did with maimed or diseased workers.

Anakin did not fear pain or death, nor even shame anymore after he had admitted to himself his guilt for Padme's fear of him about his powers being such that they consumed his reason.

No; what Anakin feared the most was dying without a chance to atone for his crimes and sins. For a child born and raised as a slave, without any material possessions to his name or worth beyond the workability of his body, Anakin knew full well the true worth of a man was his Given Word. And he had broken his Given Word to too many people to let himself die from battle injuries, let alone something flimsy and ethereal as depression or a broken heart, especially since it was his fault so many hearts were broken.

No. Anakin had debts to pay. He had oaths to still fulfill. He had the Call of the Living Force resonating inside his weary soul, telling him that his time in the world was not finished yet. He had many tasks before the peace and soothing balm of the Great Light would be granted him that he may reunite with his mother again.

Palpatine had recovered his broken body, not his soul as that had been lost in the fiery rivers of Mustafar. Only Anakin could recover his soul and set it right. When the time was correct for this healing to happen, it would. The Force would provide, if he were honest and open hearted enough to listen, accept and learn so he could finally mature into the person he was supposed to be already.

Darth Sidious was reconstructing his physical shell into something so different from his birth body that it not only hid his face, it marred it and obnubilated it from reality. Sidious thought, truly hoped, to erase not only his existence in the present but also his memory from the past and his legacy from the future. The Dark Master wanted him to be remembered as nothing but an adjunction to Palpatine's own identity and image: Vader, the Emperor's Right Hand, Enforcer and Little Pain Bitch in Residence.

 **Anakin was nobody's fool.**

He had seen in his childhood how certain people bought slaves just to degrade, humiliate and hurt them. Nobody ever bought a droid for that as they didn't really feel physical pain and the emotions were well beyond almost any droid ever built. But ' _pleasure_ ' slaves could be used for a lot of different types of pleasures. He had learned those differences before even meeting his first Jedi. My, how the monks had been aghast by that little fact of his life when he reached the Temple and the creche masters tried to indoctrinate him to their drab-grey colored view of reality.

Some Masters liked sex but had capricious spouses, constrictive social norms or deviant desires so they got a whore-slave. Pretty self-explanatory and in some cases like the handicapped or widows it also provided in-house help with other necessities. Some rich people were afraid of being blackmailed emotionally or having their secrets sold out by an external paid professional, so a permanent slave in-house was a safer, more economical choice.

Some masters liked to pretend they were much richer and more powerful than they actually were, like the old Toydarian Wattoo who owned his mother and him. However, they could not pay anybody well enough to endure their temperament and attitude all day so instead they got an admin-slave who took the verbal abuse while doing inventory and accounting, with fawning and butt-kissing too.

Other masters, the biggest number by far from what Anakin had seen, were downright stupid, out-of-control brutes who were at heart menial little cowards. These masters needed to see fear, pain and blood to feel that others were more afraid of him than they were of the people around them. Many of the Hutts and their primary lieutenants or enforcers were like this. It was odd how many Jedi masters could have fit this profile so well.

 **It was stupendous just how well Darth Sidious fit this profile to a 'T'.**

Anakin wasn't born stupid and didn't stay alive around Tatooine's slave quarters and junk districts by becoming that way either. Contrary to common belief, slaves were usually very intelligent, knowledgeable and agile in order to eke out their meagre lives from the dregs left to them in pittance for their toils.

Anakin now remade as Darth Vader, temporarily as in all things, knew full well what his MASTER would do to him at the smallest chance. Sidious was a puppeteer, but a cowardly one who hid behind the senate, the storm troopers, Imperial Security Bureau and Inquisitorius and all manners of other little institutions and organizations he planned to set in place.

Sidious would sit on his throne under the guise of poor old Palpatine who was victimized by the traitorous Jedi monks. Vader would be the one doing the heavy lifting, going around the Galaxy at the beck and call of the other man, rarely if ever being asked his opinion or wants. He would be retrograded from ' _Hero With No Fear_ ' down to simpleton enforcer, like a bouncer in a biker bar.

Sidious did not need Anakin Skywalker, intelligent, autonomous, independent thinker. He wanted a broken marionette whose only talent was intimidation just by being present in the room and a quick reflex at drawing his red lightsaber to behead the enemies of the empire. Personal enemies and opponents of Palpatine's rule would be brought back alive for a more confidential one-on-one interview with Sidious at his convenience.

Any type of work requiring intellect, knowledge or know-how would be contracted out to others; Vader was destined to be a boogeyman, the dark evil thing in the closet you pull out to scare misbehaving children back to order then shove it back into its dark enclosure when the job was done.

 _(Voltaire – Straight Razor Cabaret)_

As the med-droids drilled bones and connected bionic sockets to his nerves in preparation for the new prosthetics, Anakin felt new waves of agony. He realized now that Sidious wanted to break his poor mind all the way. And in the Sith's experience through history, physically weakening the person's mind with pain was the easiest, quickest way to undo the personality and soul for ever. Pain scars in a way that injuries can't match. Injuries can be healed or erased even, but pain will be remembered always.

 **Anakin was nobody's fool.**

He knew full well he should have spent several weeks in a Bacta tank under complete sedation. He should have gone through psychological counseling before deciding whether he wanted to have cybernetics or try cloning organic replacement limbs. There was even the possibility of transplants from other organics if the DNA was compatible or could be modified enough through biochemistry.

Did Sidious really think him so idiotic as to believe Anakin would not realize he had been butchered and reconstructed like some cheap Jawa-made droid that escaped from a sand-crawler?

Well, yes, Palpatine did think little Ani was that idiotic and inanely stupid and easy to manipulate. Stupid, self-centered, EVIL Sidious had thought all wrong that he could bribe Anakin with power, riches and a seat on the Council of Jedi despite the objections of the other masters. _Snort!_

That's not what made Anakin tick.

He'd get a nasty surprise about that soon; little Anikins had made a poo-doo and he would be at first row seats when it blew up in Palpy's prune-ugly wrinkled face in a few years from now.

 **Anakin Skywalker was a nasty little brat**

Ah, the joys of petty vengeance. Yes Anakin was aware he was petty. He had known since he was a very young child; his mother had explained it to him and he had accepted himself as such. Besides, it was the expected attitude and mannerisms of a well broken slave, was it not? To seek solace and comfort in petty acts against the other servants so as to get a higher station in the eyes of the master and his court? Well, there you go: he had a sound tactical reason for his pettiness through the years amongst the Jedi and now with Sidious. It was **another mask** to hide his nature and real goals. As for his personal penchant for exacting vengeance in a minimalist style, it fit well with his lack of material means and the need to not leave trails so as to avoid the wrath of the masters and Hutt clans.

So, given he didn't have a lot of worldly possessions, the few he had were well maintained and quite thoroughly secured against tampering or theft. Especially those with sentimental value like his two droids; one a gift for his mother and the other received from his wife just after the Battle of Naboo.

Both R2D2 and C3PO were protected from memory wipes. Anakin could remotely access them via a secret built-in heavily encrypted communicator to trigger a memory recovery or let them become aware of the data wipe so they could then act as if they were the recently refurbished little mechanical slaves they were supposed to be. Wherever his two good friends were, they would answer and Anakin would then know who it was that stabbed him in the back and why. He could even use them as real-time surveillance turrets or as a proxy to interface with ruffians he didn't want to be seen with; an old trick well used when a slave deals with higher ups on Tatooine to sell information about other slaves.

This of course meant that several little cybernetic hacks and data splicings he had committed in the Temple of Jedi's servers to get some peace and quiet when he felt the walls closing in on him would also come into play to reveal to him if his little ploy to screw Palpy had come to fruition properly.

 **Such a small thing he had done.**

 **As small as the little lives he had allowed to escape unharmed.**

Using his remote control over his two droids, Anakin had ordered them to manufacture and put in the Temple's security monitoring software a high quality video of him tearing apart _completely synthetic versions_ of each child in the Temple along several padawans, knights and masters.

The video was manufactured and edited at droid brain speed and then uploaded to the Temple servers along with warnings to those Jedi still inside the walls so they knew how to act their parts when Anakin and the 501st legion arrived to ' _pacify_ ' and ' _return to law_ ' the rebellious inhabitants. My, did he face surprised knights and masters when he took all of two minutes to explain why the deception was needed for their survival.

Palpatine's holonet broadcast about the Jedi's treason going on at the same time and issuing Order 66 gave Ani's words the legitimacy he would never have had on his own. In war as in politics and love, timing is everything. Obi Wan would be quite tickled to see his apprentice had finally learned the fine art of punctuality and used such a basic trick to fool the biggest liar, fraud and con artists of the epoch.

Anakin actually smirked an amused rictus though the pain of his new arms and legs being attached as he thought of the sheer gumption and brattiness he had shoved up Palpy's ion drives without anybody being the wiser.

 **My but dear old Sheev would throw a wobbly when he saw that Anakin had** _betrayed_ **him.**

Well, it was his own stupid fault for making him into a Sith: the Sith Way was to covet the MASTER's power until one was able to usurp said master, kill him then become MASTER oneself. Except Anakin didn't want power, dominance or rulership; he wanted to live with his wife and their future children at peace without fearing for their health and welfare.

Was he allowed a peaceful life with wife and kids? No.

Would Palpatine be allowed to rule the Galaxy and crush non-humans unchallenged? No.

It's too bad, but in real life, you don't usually get what you want, only what you can afford or craft of your own hands. Since Anakin had never wised up in time to save his family with his own hands, he lost them to the vagaries of the Universe. Sidious intended to rule invisibly from behind his benevolent persona as Palpatine thru proxies and minions, chief of which would be Darth Vader. Well, logically, since Palpy hadn't done the job himself, it had to be botched and fall to pieces around his feet, just like Ani's family had done.

If the poisonous old politician had lifted a finger and helped save Anakin's mother when he asked him for help due to the Force Visions about the sand raiders, maybe Anakin would be more inclined to help than hinder.

If Sidious had actually helped him convince Padme to visit with a reputed medic to see to her health during pregnancy, maybe Anakin would be more inclined to not let enemies of the new regime get away Scott-free in the middle of a military operation specifically to catch said enemies.

If Sidious had not tried to shatter and warp the soul of his young, vulnerable friend by butchering him without any pity or mercy, maybe Anakin wouldn't be prone to wearing the **Mask of Vader** just so he could be close enough to Palpatine to hear, see and participate in his _Grand Plan_ so as to better wreck it from inside.

 **"I am betraying you, Oh my MASTER! Such is the way of the Sith!" Anakin gleefully thought.**

As the med-droids encased the diseased, burned flesh in Katarn plating and connected the inhuman life-support suit to its prisoner, little Ani was actually gleeful, doing a mental victory dance inside the head of the destroyed entity. After all, his MASTER had deemed him _important_ and _workable_ enough to expend money, time and parts to rebuild him into this new fearsome shape to better serve him in the coming years.

It was just too bad that Palpatine had shot himself in the face with his own Sith Lightning twice in a row. As things were, he was simply making better, grander and more fierce his destoyer.

As the robotized butchering table inclined upwards and Anakin saw the world tilt on its precarious axis, he got to see the room and its crass floor, covered in puddles of blood, urine and feces along large chunks of flesh, muscle and bone shards. All from him. All sawed, ripped or lasered out of him. No wonder he had agonized for hours. The droids had gone through quite a few procedures and Ani wasn't stupid enough to believe they were all strictly necessary or even ethically done.

Already he could feel the Force trying yet failing to connect him to his new limbs, trying yet failing to heal and expand his lungs and the strength of his Bond to the Force was weaker, dimmer, less clear than before. No surgery, even cybernetic grafts, could affect the Force in such way. His right hand had not reacted so when replaced four years ago.

 **Sidious had betrayed him again.**

Anakin had been implanted with physical neural limiters in his spinal column and brain while also having the life-support suit pump certain drugs in his blood and nutrients to keep him weaker than what Palpy could handle by himself. No doubt the MASTER had a switch or control software somewhere that would allow to change the capacity and ability settings at need depending on whether Vader was in a fight or in another drab useless meeting with senators.

 **Not even a human slave anymore. Just a droid with a restriction bolt.**

"Well then, _Palpy-Baby_ ; that just begs for a special kind of betrayal in return, doesn't it?" Anakin mused, not truly dissatisfied by the situation. He had expected it after all.

If the walking incarnation of the Great Prune Spirit thought that the few temper tantrums Anakin had thrown around to date were bad, he'd get a heart attack every hour until Ani had been paid back for this _little insult_. Sith or not, Master or not, one was supposed to show respect and consideration for one's tool, especially when said tool took lives in your name and got you a bloody damned throne to sit on.

A noise form above his head was heard and then Darkness descended upon him, engulfing his senses and his being. Red light appeared in his burned, weak, ill-repaired eyes; the base color of the monitors linked to the lenses and sensors built into the great helmet that would become as iconic as the face of the mask itself.

Anakin swore to himself he'd have that blasted illumination set back to proper colorations inside a ten-day or less. No matter that Sith believed in putting red paint on everything to remind them of blood, war and surpassing adversity, he would be damned like a stupid nerf herder before he let himself see the world in red for the rest of his stay inside this oversized envelope of ready-to-eat shit.

And the audio receptors needed a tune-up in a bad way, too.

Palpatine shuffled his way to the raised butchering table, the tap-tap of his cane echoing eerily in the now silent room of horrors. As he stopped abreast of the now gargantuan Vader's seven foot tall frame, the frail old politician asked in false sympathy "Are you awake, Lord Vader? Are you cognizant?"

Anakin wanted to remotely Force-slap the geriatric little twit like he used to do with the insolent little moppets in the Temple when they insulted him for his Outer-Rim accent and ' _poor boy_ ' manners. The fact some of the moppets had actually been twice his age and knights on occasion was neither here nor there. That this moron could actually ask him if he were awake when he full well knew the many drugs and stimulants his droids had pumped him with was downright stupid in a way that made Darth Maul look like a genius.

Oh, well. He had a new mask on. At least he knew what was expected from this part he had to play.

"Padme! Where is Padme? She was there, on Mustafar... Kenobi! The traitor corrupted her! He convinced her to bring him to me as I attended the separatist leaders. He escaped! But what of my wife? What of our child?"

There. That should be enough emoting, pathos and whining to get Sidious to grit his teeth as he spat out his prepared spiel that was supposed to convince Anakin that he had been responsible for Padme dying.

He knew she was alive until a few minutes ago when he felt he life ebb to join the Force. He knew she had time to deliver new life unto this world. His faithful droids would tell him the details, maybe even have some videos to show him.

Sidious wove a tale of woe and tragedy, about how Anakin had been the one to ' _in his great rage, lose control and commit the unthinkable_ ' to the poor defenseless woman.

Again, an easy reply to deliver. The profile of his new mask was quite simple do play out. Anger, rage, boiling tempest of Force telekinesis to throw things around while leaving a safe space around Sidious to make it look as if he were subconsciously protecting the last being of any value in his life.

Wasn't that a load of poo-doo…

Seems his little diva in a snit routine paid off. _His Pruneyness_ was happy. He was practically glowing darkfyre in the Force as if he just got laid by a twilek call-girl high on spice sticks.

 **Bheurk!**

And now the grandiose evil monologue about the Empire, the Imperial senate, the Imperial Armies, the Imperial Security bureau and the Imperial office of renaming everything as being Imperial. Could this guy be anymore a stereotype than he was? Even Yoda was prone to fits of novelty on occasion and the blasted little troll was passed 950 years old!

Ah, the end. Blessed silence. A time of peace until the public funeral of Padme Naberrie, the late Queen Amidala on her birth planet of Naboo in two weeks. Ample time to get used to the new hands and legs, fix the glorified toilet bowl they gave him for a helmet and access remotely his droids to get some real news about the state of the world that would now fear and loathe him.

All in a day's work. And as a well broken slave, he knew how to work or at least make it look like he was breaking his back at work enough for the MASTER to leave him alone at his _productive_ tasks.


	2. Chapter 2

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

 **WARNING;** the language level of this one is not too particularly trashy when we consider a story based on starships, pirates, soldiers, law breakers and politicians enough to fill several Death Stars. However, as I always warn people who read my work: this language was pretty much normal in the school yard 30 years ago when I was a teenager. So, how can you have such a thin skin and be part of the same culture on the same continent if this is really that offensive to you? Where did you spend the last few decades, if you can't take a few hard words from the mouths of kids when these words have been around since before World War I?

 **PS;** I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.

 **Author's note:** for this chapter Anakin / Vader is in the re-adaptation phase of his recovery and the types and dosages of medications he gets are quite suspicious. That means that if the story seems to go in circles or his thoughts are out of line, those are symptoms of his physical pain and psychological state as well of course as the vagaries of the Force flowing and ebbing around him. I normally write in a rather linear way, even with flashbacks or asides, so any circularity, roundabouts, aborted thought processes, vagaries, hallucinations and such are voluntary devices to show the condition the man is in.

 **Star Wars**

 **HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT**

 **Chapter 2; Dead thing**

 **I exist in darkness (** _but I do not live_ **)**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Two days after Mustafar**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

If ever somebody thought of telling Anakin Skywalker just how merciful Obi Wan Kenobi had been to spare his life that day on Mustafar, they would get a visit from Vader and the 501st that would leave their world in the same sort of ruins as his body and existence had become. It would start with Ani drop-landing a star destroyer right on the peedunki's face then letting out the AT-AT's to play. After that he might order all the ship's astromechs to roll out and patch the cretin up Jawa-style so he could have a go at him in person.

The good thing about being Sith is that vengefulness was expected and style of execution was greatly encouraged, especially in public settings. And Anakin was nothing if not vengeful; the Jedi could confirm this for you. He might have saved the majority of them, but a select few had indeed died by his blade in the purge. It's just these particular Jedi had done things that really should get anybody killed.

"Karabast!" Vader deadpanned rather blandly for a man in the type of nerve rending pain he was experiencing at the moment. Then again, after what he lived in the last week, pretty much everything would look and feel bland without making any effort to contain his emotions. Not that he was encouraged to contain them, mind you. The Dark Side of the Force had to flow strongly in him or else his Master would be suspicious of too many things at this point of the play.

 _His Master_ , indeed. More like a God from the Old Books, before holocrons or flimsiplast. Some sort of mythical figure on a cloud that acts with an invisible mysterious hand in the lives of poor unsuspecting mortals foolish enough to pray for his inexistent mercies. For now at least. When Vader became active, there would be nothing _invisible or mysterious_ about how he worked or the results produced by the Dark Apostle in the name of said infernal divinity.

 _His Pruneyness_ had stuck around, holed up in his precious little office in the top levels of the medical center just long enough to sup on the pain, misery and self loathing of his apprentice before absconding his august person back to his better appointed imperial apartment in the senate rotunda. He planned to live there until the Temple of Jedi was partially demolished and rebuilt, integrated as part of the brand new redundantly nomenclatured, _what else?_ , Imperial Palace.

Now that his master had had his fill of Little Ani's temper tantrum, a #8 on the _Scale of Diva Skywalker_ , the old lecher had finally left to manage his bloated, over extended creature. Ani was finally alone physically and inside his own head. Oh joy...

"E Chu Ta, sleemo!" Vader thought _most tenderly_ towards his Master and his multiple plans. Let the pompous fool find out on his own what it's like to manage the _Hydra-of-Infinite-Heads_ otherwise known as the Bureaucracy. He should have known about them since his time as a senator for Chommel Sector and then as Supreme Chancellor, but apparently _Palpy-Baby_ had a much longer and steeper learning curve than Vader ever suspected. Maybe Padme's force ghost would have pity on him; Anakin would not. The power-mad fool had asked for all this, he could live with his own misery; it would help him understand how the rest of the multiverse felt about the whole flimsiplast-churning thing.

Shuffling along the dimly lit corridor on crooked bent legs that hurt like getting mauled by a rutting rancor beast at each step was not how Anakin had envisioned passing his weekend away from the Temple and the War. Since Karma was a well-fanged nexu and neither the Separatist leaders, the Republic leaders or the Jedi masters got the end to the Clone Wars that they had hoped, he guessed it was Karmic retribution from the Living Force that his romantic plans for a quiet getaway to Lake Varykino with Padme got spaced too.

His stubborn rush into the situation might also, in a certain skewed view _not shared by many_ , be responsible for it. Thankfully, there was a dearth of short green geriatric trolls about the place to point out the obvious failings of his impulsive youth or he would force-blast the edifice to rubble even if he was inside. Force knew his damaged body couldn't be any more wrecked than it was and a few well placed explosions could perhaps improve on the thing's disposition.

"Kreth, that kriffing nerf herder can go vape himself next time he thinks of doing me a favor!" The not really feared, and in truth still unknown at this point of time, Dark Lord of the Sith uttered inside his helmet, only himself aware of his words. Suffice it to say his thoughts towards his ex-master Kenobi were not filled with compassionate tenderness.

One of the first things Ani had done to modify his suit just last evening was tweak the vocalizer to add a control system that allowed either dimming the voice until mute or boosting it like the loudspeaker on a crowd control police speeder. The second thing he did was add Universal Translation circuits to said vocalizer and promptly program it to ignore anything not spoken in Galactic Basic so he could swear his heart out in the three dozen tongues he spoke fluently in peace without anybody hearing anything.

The bloody great helmet was so thick and airtight, he could be asleep and snoring like the thrusters on a Lambda shuttle in there and no one would be the wiser. Man, would that come in handy during the stupid senate sessions and upper management meetings Palpatine would no doubt force him to attend as part of his new _exalted functions_. Padme would be sooo jealous of his new setup... She was always dehydrated and moody after a long meeting but never drank or ate for fear of an ill-timed trip to the fresher making her miss an argument or suspiciously timed vote. Now, he would not have to worry about that little problem anymore.

Amusingly enough, it was during his little bit of tinkering that he found and hijacked several spywares and miniature microphones that Palpatine had put into the vocalizer unit and sensors of the helmet to remotely spy on all his conversations. Well played _My Master_. Normally, people would check the room's holocom and computer consoles, any droids present as well, but almost never the body armor of the participants. THAT was an amateur's mistake that Anakin would not fall for no matter how injured or mentally unbalanced he was.

He had suffered setbacks during the Clone War because some of the security people had not been as assiduous as they should; they let people claim privilege of rank or diplomacy when in reality anybody inside an active war theater usually sees those suspended or severely curtailed. No police or soldier under his command EVER let petty little things like rank and station stop a search if they wanted a happy general at the end of their shift. _Snort!_ Man, had those searches caused a scandal with the Jedi masters and the Republic senators! Especially given the number of sold-out traitors he caught and exposed in public before the so-called ' _bosses_ ' could interfere.

As Darth Vader approached the door to his permanently attributed ' _stateroom_ ' in the newly baptized _Imperial Central Medical Support Building_ , his thought took on another tangent. It was either the medication they gave him playing on his mind or rather the lack of any pain management that let him in so much agony that he could scarcely think straight for more than a few seconds at a time.

Query: was it legal under imperial law to nominate a corpse for a bureaucratic, military or political posting? And where exactly in the Empire's chart of jobs and posts would _Lord Sith_ or _High Executioner_ fit? _Inquiring minds_ once married to an incredibly inquisitive senator want to know.

Bah! Not really, no.

The disfigured fool ( _yes, I mean you, Oh my Master_ ) would probably pass a new set of laws to _'regularize_ ' the situation while also making certain that said corpse was at the same legal standing as a droid, lower than cattle or lab rats, and that property be legally attributed by default to the government in the person of the Emperor as he was the one naming the aforementioned autonomously mobilized corpse to the job.

In fact, knowing Sidious a bit more since his reveal as a Sith Master, Anakin was willing to bet he would probably end up being tagged on the forehead with a bar code and logogram from the Ministry of Defense then have his service records relocated to the department that controls the corridor sweeping droids and the automated space garbage scows in planetary orbit. It would just be the sort of emotional abuse and psychological games his Master would like to play with his favorite minion.

 **The Crypt**

 _(Star Wars – The Rebel theme)_

 **Two days after Mustafar**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Palpatine was an expert at psychological cruelty and torment, emotional manipulations and verbal jousting to shame a linguistics professor. He had to be: one does not rise to the station of Sith Master out of the kindness of one's heart; rather through lies, hypocrisy, perjury, innuendo and Betrayal.

That particular word, **Betrayal** , always needs a capital ' **B** ' when speaking in Sith terms as it has religious and philosophical connotations as well as tactical and strategic ones. In fact, the best way to describe the Sith culture and manner was to quote the old proverb: " _Betrayal is my philosophy, my methodology, my technique, my tool, my Art, my thoughts, my gift and my curse; and in the end, my death just as it was my feast all of my life._ " If you don't get the point of Sith religion and lifestyle after reading that, you need a shrink. And a notary to finish your testament. Soon.

When Vader opened the door to his permanent accommodations inside the ICMSB, supposedly a necessity due to his highly important functions as well as a proof of the emperor's favoritism towards his newly exalted status, he was in fact reminded of what kind of utterly sadistic bastard Sidious was. His appetite for the suffering of peoples was surpassed only by his drive to thrive on the cries of anguish and despair from those whose souls were warped and shredded by his manipulations, games, schemes, insults and velvet-laced put-downs. The _creature_ might dine on corpses but only when they were swathed in a sauce of deleteriously crass abasement.

Grumbling somewhat childishly inside his helmet, Vader passed the doorframe and locked the valve for the night. Immediately, the resident protocol droid, a mindless thing painted black and silver as per Imperial Protocols, came active and asked what it could do for 'Lord Vader' to assist his well being. Well that was a load of bantha poo-doo. The day Sidious did anything for Anakin's well being was the day master Yoda stopped being a crotchety old crone and gave Mon Calamari dance lessons in public schools instead of trying to turn kidnapped enslaved children into child-soldiers for the glory of Jedi and its cult of assassin-monks.

Anakin decided to take some time to recover from his exertions by sitting down for a while. He carefully lowered his now oversized frame in the large wing backed chair that had obviously been placed there in place of pride to serve as Sidious's throne when he visited him during his current treatment or further hospital stays when he got damaged in the course of hunting rebels and Jedi runaways. The massive black Korriban ebony frame and lavender ( _Imperial Purple_ ) felt upholstery made for a garish ensemble, especially the Sith reliefs engraved in the wood all over the thing.

The now restive Dark Lord ( _he was dressed in all-_ **black** _; of course he was a_ **dark** _lord, you nitwits!_ ) took the time to glance over the truly well appointed apartment and sniff disdainfully at the waste of materials and man hours it had taken Palpatine to assemble it all. All for no reason, that is. Don't get him wrong; as a VIP stateroom in a military hospital, it was splendidly done and exactly the style he would have envisioned his wife giving birth in, although she did prefer lighter color tones compared to his own preference for earth brown and charcoal black. What was wasteful was the mentality and goal behind the luxurious setup.

Take the sitting area; besides the throne parked on its mini-dais of three shallow steps to clearly indicate whom it belonged to ( _the embroidered crest in the backrest should help with that_ ) there were two three-seat couches and another smaller throne made of black durasteel frame and black simile-leather that matched his support suit. There were four small square end tables and two coffee tables all made in the same Korriban ebony as _Palpy's log_.

On the side was located an expansive conference / dining table with all sorts of electronic goodies demanding his attention like holocoms, virtual keyboards, speakers, flimsi printers / scanners, and multiple electricity and network sockets, all spread out at each individual seat so all guests could use whatever they needed during a complex meeting. The vast piece of furniture could seat 14 people at the same time and also had smaller proportional versions of the two thrones, one at each end. The table and chairs were all built with a durasteel frame covered in Korriban ebony veneer and cushioned with deep plush purple padding.

Next to the dining set along the wall was a long serving counter with eight warming pans and eight cooling pans arranged in buffet style with a monumental drinks-mixer machine fit for some of Coruscant's best upper skyline restaurants. Between the dining set and the massive ash-grey durasteel egg in the far left was the doorway to the lavatory. Again, it was fit for a monarch ( _and justly so; he married a queen so that made him a prince-consort at the least_ ) the facilities were made of cast night-black porcelain with fixtures made of actual sterling silver with porcelain knobs and inlays. The four toilets were not just the standard ionic-wave dry-flush system used in 90% of the galaxy's ships and evolved planets; it was water. Same for the separate four sinks ( _many guests at the same time_ ). The single shower stall and bath tub; all flowed genuine clean safe water, not just an ionic/sonic head.

Vader had to admit that any guests he received would be well treated. The setup was like having a miniature officer's mess inside his quarters just for his own needs and to also impress his visitors with his riches and opulence like a senator or diplomat would need to do inside an embassy apartment. It made him think of Padme's penthouse at 500 Republica, the incredibly well appointed, exclusive and snobbishly rich building where only those with direct connections to the Galactic Republic Government, diplomats or Munn-rich types could even set foot inside.

Anakin snorted in amused memory at the first time he had set foot inside the lobby and been accosted by the security guards before he even reached the reception desk to present his Jedi credentials and letter from the Naboo Queen asking ' _specifically_ ' for him to guard the senator during her time in the capital city. He, the teenaged ruffian with the weird side-braid, black robes and cocky grin that waved a lightsaber around as if he was born with it in his hand. Oh, the _scandal_ that had been! He and Pads had laughed at it so hard, long after it was done.

Vader looked around the decadently decorated apartment and could not hold it in anymore: he laughed out loud. Well, not loud really; his longs and respirator didn't allow that and his helmet muted every sound out of him anyways. But it was the thought that counted.

 _His Pruneyness_ had outdone himself in his manipulations; all the way to the point of shooting himself in both feet with a turbolaser. Palpatine had been born into Naboo's higher nobility and lived that way ever since. His accession to the posts of sector senator and then supreme chancellor had only elevated his wealth and standing. Because of this, he had a severely bigoted view of the entire population at large, and the poor or Outer-Rim Worlds' citizens in particular. He had a large blind spot when it came to understanding just how people from the lower castes or social classes related to wealth; their own or that of others.

Basically _Palpy-Baby_ thought he was clever in silently insulting _Little Anikinni_ by giving him all these shiny new toys to play with in his room while he was ' _out of service_ ' to keep him from throwing another one of his famous tantrums that he tended to when upset ( _nasty unfounded rumors, that!_ ). To further obnubilate his **Beloved Dear Friend (** _Yeah, and I have an honest Hutt to present you!_ **)** , the lecherous old liar had tried to glare-blind Anakin with the twin mirages of plentiful food and fresh flowing water at will; both something that any poor mistreated overworked desert-dwelling slave child from Tatooine would give an arm for.

Or maybe his freedom and capacity to think? **Snort!**

Anakin Skywalker had _walked out to the sky_ a long time ago and put most of the desert and its environmental miseries behind him. The drab painful memories of his enslavement, those would always be with him and no amount of luxury furniture, free food and limitless water would ever take away the pain of seeing his mother beaten and raped in front of his 4 year old eyes by one of Gardulla the Hutt's associates as part of his payment for services rendered. The pain of witnessing that, the shame of not being able to help her against the thug and the incredibly personally painful remembrance of having been whipped to the blood and then raped himself because he did in fact try to stop the man...

No; Palpatine was shooting a tractor beam at a black hole if he thought that he would manage to bamboozle Vader with petty crime-boss level displays of wealth and luxury. He had the **good life** for a few years already by association with Padme and the rest of the senators around her. He already knew about this type of thing and how to go about it; he just wasn't interested in a lavish lifestyle for his own self as his needs were actually modest. It was one of the few things he agreed with the Jedi masters: too much material possessions and flat out luxury make for lazy and weak people.

If Ani had decided to, he could have strong-armed the Temple of Jedi's managers into accepting him having a bigger and better appointed apartment in exchange for giving them a percentage of his royalties on the programs, droids and ship parts he designed and secretly sold to companies like Corellian Engineering and Sienar Fleet Systems through an anonymous numbered incorporation. He had been accumulating money since his first day inside the Temple's walls and had put it to good use since, despite all ' _perceived_ ' appearances to the contrary.

The other level of Palpatine's insult was much more transparent and far more personal; due to his current health situation and the constraints of the life-support suit, Anakin was incapable of utilizing, let alone enjoying 95% of the luxury and comfort of the apartment.

 **The sarcophagus**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Two days after Mustafar**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

After many greatly painful and herculean efforts, Vader had finally managed to relocate himself inside the large durasteel egg in the far left of the room. The top portion of the drab grey hyperbaric chamber lowered, covering the black creature of nightmares that had haunted the halls for the last two days, shuffling around on bent limbs, moaning in agonies both physical and mental. Palpatine had long ago withdrawn back to his precious new accommodations as Emperor of the Galaxy, but only after having supped liberally upon the maelstrom of dark, nefarious and downright evil thoughts that swirled chaotically inside his erstwhile apprentice.

Now that the damnable old lecher was finally away, Darth Vader could sleep, leaving Anakin Skywalker in peace so he could rest his mind and cogitate a few things. Betrayals did not come out of thin air _all on their own_ after all. It did demand quite a bit of skill, planning and resources.

"I am betraying you, Oh My Master; can you feel it?" Anakin asked the empty enriched air inside the egg-shaped cavity. "Such is the depth of my _Sithness_ that even handicapped and diminished I manage to plot and scheme your demise most foul! Mwu ah ah ah!" He exulted inside his lonely cell. Or should he say sarcophagus? After all, the suit was a coffin to hold a dead thing despite its mobility, the room outside was his crypt as he needed one like all monsters from faerie tales, ergo the HBC should logically be the sarcophagus to house the coffin inside the crypt. And the masters at the Temple of Jedi said he couldn't think logically or causally to save his life.

 _Pffft!_ Shows what the old crones knew about him.

Ani leaned back into the hard, barely padded backrest of the life support apparatus that was designed uniquely for the service and repair of his autonomous casket. Once in place, a claw lowered from the ceiling to unclasp and elevate his great helmet while other smaller robotic arms situated at the headrest unfurled to grab, unlock then remove the mask and collar system from his neck.

That was about as far as it went for freedom from his confinement.

Small arms like the manipulators of his beloved R2D2 rose from the floor to connect electricity and network wires in the appropriate ports while other more human-like hands moved the great black armor-mesh cloak backwards until it could be folded and clipped to a rectangular metal panel that served just for this function as well as being the support for some lights and speakers for the private holocom. The latter two he had installed last night.

Palpatine had designed the Hyperbaric Chamber (HBC) along the same lines as the TIE fighters and stormtroopers: with the most minimalist, least expensive approach. Okay! The rat bastard short changed him by giving him a steaming heap of nexu droppings. It wasn't like Anakin wasn't expecting something so childish from the man. When exactly had he done differently ever since Ani knew him?

Still, if _His Pruneyness_ insulted his intelligence and common sense by telling him he kept the design bare to leave poor little Vader something to tinker with during the long lonely nights to come, he would by-pass all the Sith foreplay of Betrayals and just drop a kretthing starbase on his head. See if you can talk, cajole, buy or threaten your way out of that, sarlaac spit-wad!

Damn but this rancor pit was uncomfortable! And it smelled like the underside of a Hutt on a hot dry Tatooine day when there was no wind to be had. _Bleurgh!_ Wasn't this thing supposed to be new?

Palpatine was most clearly aware that almost 45% of Vader's body mass was cybernetic and the rest had lost all outside nerve endings and pain receptors when his skin had burned all the way through to the under layers of the epidermis in massive **full-body 4** **th** **degree calcination**. The damage was so grievous that he lost capacity in his eyes, nose, mouth and throat. His genitals were completely cremated to ash and his anus was melted sealed shut by the fiery dross as he crawled on the incandescent volcanic cinders in attempt to escape the lava river's ignition zone. And lets not ever forget that his clothing had ignited and stuck INTO the lesions and calcination zones as they turned to ash along with his still living carcass.

At this point, still being alive was not a miracle; it was a damn sentence to eternal torture. The suit did not come off unless he was inside the big metal egg or a full emergency medical work-over since the setup was so complicated to assemble and configure. Not that he wanted to take it off anymore. The cruel unthinking droids that butchered him had done the most minimal job on his outer layer to debride dead skin and remove detritus, close bleeding veins and spread some spray-on Kolto mist to prevent infection then placed the suit's segmented parts directly on top of the still exposed raw, scalded flesh.

There was no underwear.

There was no body glove like under stormtrooper armor.

There was no specific padding to the joints and friction points of the human anatomy; only the armored simile-leather that held the molded Katarn pieces together along with some belts around the waist for his tool sheaths.

He added those belts and sheaths himself, just so you know.

Now he absolutely needed medically enriched high-pressure air to survive at all times as it carried drugs to prevent infections on the dregs of his skin and exposed flesh lesions as well as helping his lungs to flex and absorb oxygen with some aerosolized nutrients. A small emergency aerator was built into the mouth zone of the mask with a pair of miniature oxygen reserves, 30 minutes in each, in the flared flanges on the helmet's lower part.

His stomach lining had been baked by the volcanic heat and ash coming into his trachea as he screamed in agony. It no longer worked right, unless you counted multiple ulcers as ' _working right_ '. Vader could not eat solid or even liquid food anymore until serious surgeries were done to his entire digestive tract to repair the damage. He needed to be fed by intravenous lines out of a medical dialysis machine. A small compact system was built into the armored chest plate of the suit alongside the main respirator. To help sustain stomach and digestive tract functions, he would have to drink medicated liquefied Vitapaste once per week until he could find medical assistance that deserved to be called that.

He could no longer excrete his body's wastes since the entirety of the epidermis was broiled off his flesh thus destroying the sweat glands, most of his nose and the lachrymal ducts. Without genitals, the droids had connected a permanent catheter from the reopened natural opening of the bladder and linked it to a waste pouch. The ' _codpiece_ ' in the armor's lower segment around the pelvic area was another one of _Palpy_ 's secret but not so discrete insults against him and what he lost. It was shaped as if he was a strong, well endowed man ( _he had been, Padme could tell you so…_ ) but it only contained the _very loosely fitted_ catheter and nothing else.

The droids had set a non-standard colostomy port at the level of the rear side of the armored chest plate just above the kidneys by tunneling inside his abdomen to connect the colostomy pipe then bringing it out of the corpse in a protected zone rather than the sides or forward abdominal zone as is the normal medical protocol. Therefore, he had small armored pumps sucking, dehydrating and compressing the ashes of his organic wastes into a discrete armored pouch at the small of his back.

 **Oh, joy of joys…**

In truth, the doctors should have kept him in Bacta for about three months before doing a series of multiple organ transplants and cybernetic grafts to fix him. Nothing less severely invasive would ever truly be sufficient to help him back to any semblance of normal, natural human health.

As a natural consequence of all this, that meant the bathroom facilities were useless to him. The buffet would go unfilled unless he had guests. He could not feel the comfortable padding of the furniture. The entire luxurious setup of his VIP stateroom was one big virtual ' _finger_ ' from the person who was supposedly his one last true friend in the world.

 **Nice friend he had...**

Well no. But Oh Hells No! Time to pull out the old Anakin from his sleep and do something.

"I have betrayed you, Oh My Master. From long before I even knew your identity or your role in my life, I was setting up the pawns, peons and tokens on the many game-boards that would ensure your ignominious defeat at my hands. Lo and behold, Sith Master, the yawning chasm of Perdition beckons for thee! Mwu ah ah ah!" Vader _giggled_ like a drunken schoolgirl from a raunchy Holonet cartoon inside his _Egg of Doom_. A fitting name since every time he emerged he was renewed like a chick and brought forth Doom upon the worlds with him. So, a realistic name indeed… _Giggle!_

Since he was the only one inside the thing to hear his elucubrations, it was okay to do that. He could deny it to himself later on when he sobered up. Nobody would contradict him anyways... _Giggle!_

Now that he was well sat on the thinly padded bench, he could pick up and manipulate the objects of his deepest, darkest most scandalous desires: the broken force binders from the operating table. He had ripped those things out of their locks when he went through his excellently orchestrated and superbly executed performance of a genuine opera diva's pre-soiree mental breakdown.

The sort of breakdown that breaks off the things he wants to abscond out of Sidious's ever grasping claws so he could have some quality time with the little nuggets of treasure. _His Master_ might have thought he had lost all control or inhibitions at that point but it was a lie. A well crafted, deliberately customized play for an exclusive and discerning audience. Another **Mask** for another role.

Just like the **Mask** of dumb blond jock soldier-boy he had portrayed since he was 15 years old.

For almost 18 years now, the 23 year old Anakin Skywalker had been cultivating the appearances, mannerisms and reputation of a harmless airheaded; an unguided, aimless and unambitious boy who was satisfied with just following orders or playing with his little toys in his room _like a good slave should_. It wasn't like the Jedi masters wanted anything else out of him anyways. And they were quite happy to see him disappear into his room so they could have peace and quiet to gossip evilly and disparagingly about him to his back. As they were dishonest cowards, they rarely if ever confronted him openly or in front of other crechelings and padawans. No, they had reputations to maintain, and he had his **Mask** too.

After puberty hit him hard both in body and temperament, he made sure to get out of the Temple a few times a month and go quite visibly to some low level cantinas and neighborhood diners where picking up a willing partner for unattached sex and no questions asked was easy. It confirmed to anybody tracking his movements his attitude, temperament and dubious morality, just as befit the **Mask of the Childish Fool** he presented to the Temple dwellers who did not make a concerted effort to know the real Anakin behind his numerous identities.

Since his very first month in the Temple of Jedi, the masters had scorned him, the knights had spat on him and the padawans had sneered in fearful jealousy. Only the crechelings had ever showed him any kindness. **Snort!** Except those who were already pre-assured of being taken as learner by an already specified master who asked for them from their arrival at the Temple. Those asked their future trainer's opinion and copied it assiduously. Anakin's early time in the Jedi cult was isolated, lonely and fraught with pain, misery and open rejection.

Because of this emotional situation, Anakin had fallen back on his default **Mask** that he used in the streets of Tatooine when he wasn't dealing specifically with his mother Shmi, his owner Wattoo or anybody he knew to be an enforcer for the Hutt cartels. That personality was what Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi had met and dealt with as he confronted Sebulba and piloted his way to victory in the Boonta Eve Classic of 32 BBY. That street kid was brash, bratty, outspoken, unafraid of authority or power and had no care for the opinions of anybody. He also wore his emotions and thoughts on his sleeve which gave him an air of annoying innocence yet also made people instinctly trust him as if he were completely guileless and unable to lie or cheat.

 **Yeah, he became Darth amongst the Sith because he had such a white pristine soul…**

Well, his **Mask of Idiotic Man-Child** who needed the directions given by the old crones in the Temple or by his ever-loving wife to know how to run his life was _just one more Mask_ in the long list of false identities he used to manage his situation and survive the hostile environment he was forced to live in.

 **Point of proof:** do you really think that he was so special as a child slave that he would have survived passed that beating and rape at the age of four if he hadn't wised up and realized just how out-sized, out-gunned, out-classed and certainly out-numbered by everybody around he was?

 **NO.**

He learned to shut his mouth, open his eyes and ears, and keep his hands out of sight with a knife or blaster in each and several recording devices all over the place to blackmail his aggressors with. Who knew that even among debased crass like the Hutt that raping or just molesting a child under the age of ten could garner such repulsion? He lived, healed, learned and then adapted to survive the streets, the junk shop and the dark enclosed rooms where the crapulent debasements of Tatooine happened, knowing full well that Shmi would not be there to save him for ever.

The Jedi cultists never saw through his **Masks** despite the years of proximity and common work.

His new Master was so bigoted and blinded by his snobbish high-born preconceived notions about Anakin's life, personality and abilities that he never saw through his **Masks.** Sidious NEVER saw the real Anakin Skywalker despite his suspicious nature and the fact Anakin had not only become a Sith apprentice but a Darth of all things. And how? By Betrayal of the Jedi cultists.

How the kreth do you BLINDLY employ and manipulate somebody who got his promotion and religious title by acts of oath breaking and bloody murderous backstabbing? It's not like Anakin could exactly hide from Sidious that he Betrayed the Jedi followers. The senile old man ordered him to do so himself, in person, after the fight with Windu where Ani committed his first real Sith Betrayal.

Karabast, but the geriatric sleemo was stupid! Him and the masters of Jedi deserved each other!

Vader carefully sighed to avoid straining his lungs in the pressurized atmosphere of the HBC. He was becoming scatterbrained again; not something that he was used to. Despite all the appearances his alternate identities had put on for show, he had never gotten fully drunk or stoned in his life. Except on Padme. That woman was intoxicating and her love was so undilutedly pure that it deserved a toxicological classification for itself on the charter of illicit narcotics. Which meant that the HBC was constructed to, or had a small movable system designed to, mix psychoactive narcotics or sedatives in the air to steal away his ability to focus his mental faculties and see the puppet strings going from his broken shell to the fingers of a certain shadow-man in the far distance.

Too bloody late; he knew about those already. He would cut the strings when he was good and ready, not before.

However, in order to plan, scheme and schedule properly a competent Betrayal against **His Master** and associates, he would need rest for his body and his mind. He could not relax his _powerful, almost invisible mind shields_ as long as Sidious kept probing him for treasonous thoughts every ten minutes. That meant he couldn't sleep as that would loosen the mental barrier almost by ¾ for the duration of his slumber, he was thus limited to _static meditation_ for which he was truly unsuited.

Well, no, not a t all. He was lying shamelessly about that too. He could activate and employ _static meditation_ competently, just not as well as _moving meditation_ or _combat trance_ , so he told people he wasn't any good at it. Hiding one's true capacities meant you had better chances at surviving surprise attacks as you had surprises of your own to let loose in return to the traps of the enemy. Anakin had never shown more than 2/3 of his abilities, capacities or competencies to the Jedi cultists as he had a nasty feeling he would need to defend himself from them at some point of his life.

Greeeaaat! He just realized he could now add Jedi Seer or Sith Prophet to his resume… Kriff!

Focus, Anakin, the end is near… You can sleep soon…

The solution to his fleeing mind and psychic privacy was a little something he had built for himself that the technologically blind zealot cultists at the Temple of Jedi had never found out about and neither had Palpatine or his agents.

When he was in his first year at the Temple, he had been punished illegally (by Temple rules that is) by being moved forcibly from his basic crecheling room over to what was an unused storage chamber just under the ceiling of the main hangar where the Jedi fighters, shuttles and speeders were repaired. The masters and knights who moved him without Yoda's permission all said that it was a decision of the Council to protect the other children from the poisonous lies and perfidious stories of the outside world that he kept telling the other children in his class.

 _Anakin had been in heaven since._

The Master of the Order, Mace Windu, who was the Discipline Prefect for the whole Jedi cult, never punished the culprits. Oh, he never approved of the abusive, insulting way they did things, or the verbal arm-twisting way they did it. But he never blamed them. He never apologized to Anakin for what he endured. He never even offered Anakin to move back close to the other children. Anakin was despondent, insulted and pissed-off at the whole cult of fools, but he felt it from what was actually heaven for him inside the walls of the hostile cult's Temple.

The storage chamber had not been emptied before they punted his meager duffel bag of roughly packed personal belongings inside and him after it. That meant that he had boxes full of old power tools, electronics like scanners, datapads, flimsiplast printers, universal adaptors for different categories and technological types of sockets and wires… And behind the pile of boxes filled with parts of droids, ships and damaged Temple systems, he found the two most beautiful things in his young boyish life to date. One was a large powered bench with a combined metal-bit / laser / graviton-field CNC automated lathe that still worked quite well. The second was a jewel in the rough: an almost completed, unique design, speeder bike with two-person seat and a rear-mounted plate with holding clamp for an astromech droid.

With a grin, Vader remembered the reactions from Yoda and the other masters of the Council when they found him, hard at work in his room after almost three weeks without a peep. Almost all thought he had run away; only a small minority were relieved he was safe, the others quite disappointed he yet lived.

 **Not a single one, not even Yoda, was truly happy he was still amongst them.**

Well, inside that big chamber that was easily 12 times the size of his crecheling room and much quieter despite the machineries and ship movements due to the armored walls, he allowed himself to be his true self since he was away from prying eyes. But, in a Temple filled with Jedi who used the Force to watch and listen in on conversations remotely, he still could not rest or work easily as himself; not yet.

Until he found and manufactured the simplest, most reliable trick he ever saw in his life to deflect and distract Force users that depended on remote surveillance and mental manipulations to maintain their powers. Like the cultists of Jedi. Like the cultists of the Sith.

 **Force binders.**

The technology had existed, like lightsabers, for many thousands of years and was practically unchanged from the first models ever made. Honestly, the company that made them was the same since the first pair was sold to Galactic Republic Security and they only ever changed the electromagnetic lock, never the force-denying emitters. And that was the trick, you see…

Anakin figured out that if the Force binders could stop the powers of a full Jedi or Sith on skin contact, the same emitters could, maybe, generate an area-effect aura that would stop the nefarious mental emissions or the snooping Force probes of his unwilling neighbors.

 **It worked.**

The more Force binder emitters Anakin placed around the room, the less mental pressure he felt, the better he slept and the better his overall attitude, temperament and character became. Not that anybody ever saw it; he was wise enough to keep his discovery about the _Forcible Peacefulness Aura_ as he named it and its effects on living entities to his lonesome. To do otherwise would see him be perceived as too autonomous and far too intelligent for his age, therefore an immediate danger to the cult and cultists which meant they would try to neutralize, maybe kill him.

It was just like calculating the zone requirements for an antigrav engine on a speeder or the force field zone needed around a spaceship for defense. You simply need to light the emitter and trace out the zone covered and then stay inside the zone to have peace and quiet from long range interlopers. From that point, obtaining old, obsolete or damaged Force Binders was easy-peasy where he lived as NOBODY paid attention in person. A few like Windu tried to program routines in the Temple's security cameras to track his movements and alarm him if he went out of bounds but Anakin had R2D2 hack the system and modify the routines before showing him how to do it himself, thus learning how to hack and splice competently at the same time.

From that point on, nobody was ever again able to use the Temple's cameras, sensors or droids to search for him or track his movements in real time unless he allowed it. He began using the ventilation ducts and utilities tunnels and shafts inside the walls and between floors to move around thus avoiding detection by living Jedi since he didn't cross their paths. This method of stealth dwelling inside the Temple allowed him to dodge the majority of the hazing and abuse he would have otherwise suffered from the older cultists relentlessly until he became knight and the Clone Wars started, taking everybody's attention in another direction.

Darth Vader finished a few spot welds and slowly connected the first emitter to the power supply he had purloined from the droid maintenance chamber in the lower floors. The emitter lit up at 1% capacity as desired. Vader then cautiously turned the round knob of the dimmer to increase the strength of the aura and immediately felt a great weight, an Immeasurable Darkness fall away from his mind and soul. He felt the Light of the Living Force come back roaring to life inside of himself. The best was, he didn't feel any answering roar of anger or outbursts of Dark Side energy coming from where he knew Sidious to be located.

It worked! His old trick worked! And it was still his own private little secret, too!

"I have just **Betrayed** you, _My Master_! I have slipped the wires of bondage and claimed my freedom from your yoke and chains! But! Fear me, _Master_! For I hide now in the shadows you mistakenly believe give you such power and solace! I make them mine! I steal their ethereous mists from you and lay claim to those powers and authority you have falsely declared your own! I will sleep now. I will dwell upon the secrets of the Night and tomorrow, I will emerge fully rested, refreshed and full of vigor from my Egg bringing new Doom unto you and your minionesque dominion like a Cursed Phoenix rebirthed into undeath eternal. Sleep, Sidious, Sleep all you wish… I will be there when you awake…"


	3. Chapter 3

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

 **WARNING;** the language level of this one is not too particularly trashy when we consider a story based on starships, pirates, soldiers, law breakers and politicians enough to fill several Death Stars. However, as I always warn people who read my work: this language was pretty much normal in the school yard 30 years ago when I was a teenager. So, how can you have such a thin skin and be part of the same culture on the same continent if this is really that offensive to you? Where did you spend the last few decades, if you can't take a few hard words from the mouths of kids when these words have been around since before World War I?

 **Author's note:** for this chapter Anakin / Vader is in the re-adaptation phase of his recovery and the types and dosages of medications he gets are quite suspicious. That means that if the story seems to go in circles or his thoughts are out of line, those are symptoms of his physical pain and psychological state as well of course as the vagaries of the Force flowing and ebbing around him. I normally write in a rather linear way, even with flashbacks or asides, so any circularity, roundabouts, aborted thought processes, vagaries, hallucinations and such are voluntary devices to show the condition the man is in.

 **Star Wars**

 **HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT**

 **Chapter 3; Technobabble**

 **Introduction to basic recycling**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Five days after Mustafar; morning**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Anakin was pleased. Though, honestly, in his circumstance, you would be pleased as well. He did after all just come out from his third night of peaceful, restful sleep without any nightmares or Force visions in several months.

He had even managed yesterday to switch out the ridiculously hard, straight shaped bench in the HBC for an old reclining multi-segment chair normally used in the dialysis room where otherwise mobile patients had to wait well, patiently, for their blood transfusions or chemotherapy to be done. The chair was a minor luxury for all its wear and tears. Sturdy durasteel frame, three inch thick padding covered in industrial grade fluid-proof material in pleasant earth-brown tones Anakin always favored for his clothes, travel bags and few decorations in his room at the Temple.

The chair had been designed with adjustable backrest, headrest, armrests and elevating leg rest. It had two telescoping poles to suspend IV bags, pumps and sensors that made installing and controlling his own medication bags far easier than the original HBC design. Because the chair had been built to house many types of patients from different species, it could easily hold his massive frame without straining under his weight. The two small folding trays that could be brought forward and united into a small table over the armrests just like in the plush sofas of the Coruscant Opera House were quite ingenious and very much appreciated. Especially after Ani had added to them some small lights, electrical outlets, network connectors and smart sockets for compressed pure oxygen, natural gas, chemically pure H2O and the central vacuum cleaner system to help keep his _Egg of Doom_ tidy when he worked inside.

Vader needed to keep as much of his tools small and hand-usable for now as he was forced from bending or moving too much until he could have the diverse prosthetics truly adjusted so they stopped hurting him at every movement. Under such circumstances, the Hyperbaric Chamber wasn't so bad; it gave him an organization system as well as a somewhat safe and reliable environment to relax in. Especially now that he had placed **Force Deflection strips** all around the inside.

Another reason for enjoying the day was his first semi-solid weekly meal had been this morning upon waking up. Vitapaste. Normally it was a ' _Blergh!_ ' worthy moment which he remembered from several moments during the Clone Wars when he was laid out in an infirmary somewhere but he had an epiphany; all his taste buds inside his mouth had been burned out by the fire and heat. He could not taste anything anymore so the paste went down without getting any reaction from him. Bless the multiverse for small favors. The chilled syrupy paste even managed to coat enough of his stomach that it soothed the ulcers and quelled the nausea he had been feeling since he came back from Mustafar.

 **Well, time for work. Again.**

After a good start to his day, a fully suited Vader was now standing besides his opened _Egg_ , looking down at the pile of junk and scraps that was brought in at his request during the night. The young man scratched with a gloved hand at his large helmet in deep thought as he gleaned with eyes and Force senses through the stock of damaged, ripped and sometimes twisted parts, wires and circuits lying on his supposedly rich and luxurious apartment floor.

Having a good relationship with the building's much overlooked and disregarded cleaning droids did have several potent benefits for the enterprising young man; like his new sleeping chair for one. Everything that had been removed from the surgery room where he was butchered and dehumanized after his well planned and executed Force tantrum had been put in the biohazard hopper, waiting for the contracted recycling company to come collect at the appointed time at the end of next week. Lucky him, he got there first and, thanks to help from his mechanoid friends, now had plenty of toys to play with while he completed his inhumanly short physiotherapy to recover full use of what body he had.

If that bothersome old gundark Palpatine asked, he just might tell him about a plan to replace certain ' _organs_ ' that the lava flows of Mustafar had deprived him of. **Hint:** he didn't mean his lungs. That innuendo should shut up the wrinkled cave lurker for a while during which a certain 23 year old Sith could cogitate broodily on his plans to commit anarchy from the depths of _Shadows Most Foul_. Being a dark lord nowadays, it wasn't as if he could do it from atop the _Pillars of Light_ , was it?

Anyhow; _His Pruneyness_ having decided to _orate most gravely_ from the stately podium of the senate instead of granting him his august presence, Anakin was free for the next few days to abandon himself to his favorite hobby of droid building which would also happen to take his mind off the excruciating pain of his many injuries. It was rather obvious they hadn't healed much yet as he had been deprived of at least six weeks of Bacta treatments and the tightly fitted suit tended to chafe and irritate in the worse possible spots to boot. Ani was quite certain he was being shorted on his meds, again, but had already initiated a plan to start compensating for all of the lacking treatments as the new ' _borrowed_ ' IV bags suspended inside the HBC attested.

Making friends with the med-droids had benefits too; he now had access to the medication closets.

If all worked well, he should be able to sleep safely and peacefully while receiving the much needed medications at the same time pretty much indefinitely. That blasted durasteel egg was bound to come in handy at some time. He just had to make his **adaptor system** mobile and adaptable enough to not have to build one at each place Palpatine would send him for a few days like a dog running after a damned stick. Anakin had done this for almost a decade now under the Jedi masters; he knew full well that his new job would be something between diplomatic envoy, personal courier and private assassin. The very essence of an unstable nomadic life. The best way to keep someone powerful and resourceful like himself from making any sort of attachments, friends, business allies or political contacts of any sorts that could be turned against the Emperor to grab the throne.

Funny, in the end, how Jedi and Sith cults think alike in how they treat and employ their followers.

Food for thought, isn't it? And after that, people wonder ' **why** ' he helped bring down the whole Jedi religion and sack the Temple. Open a history text about the Sith Wars and the Great Hyperspace War and throw in the Ruusan Reformation of the Jedi Code and you will understand plenty. It's not like he, Anakin, was in the habit of deep philosophical musings. He was more of a materialistic, pragmatic sort even though Padme did say he had an incredibly deep romantic streak. But reading history and lining up power plays to see who benefited, that he could do on an almost instinctual level that even his wife had envied. He couldn't craft a law to save his life but could read one and right away see the fail-points and flaws in it, especially the problems that would happen at the moment someone tried to physically implement the law in material reality. THAT capacity was why he knew that the Jedi cult had come to the end of both its usefulness and its capacity to adapt enough to survive the changing times.

 _Sigh._ **Anyways…**

The 23 year old moved a hand and was happy to see that his telekinesis still worked well enough for crude gestures; he would only need to practice the fine movements later on. He moved the parts into separate piles sorted firstly by how damaged they were and how much work would be needed to make them usable again. Then he would do a secondary sorting by potential usefulness in his plans.

Ordinary somewhat recent junk that was undamaged but thrown out for newer stuff.

Old obsolete junk that still worked.

Parts yanked off stuff but easy to reconnect.

Morsels carelessly torn apart from what used to be a whole.

And finally, the scraps that were so damaged they were falling to wires and bolts.

All the bio-wastes from his surgery were already stored in purpose-built clearly tagged medical red thermoplastic bins. The wastes had been recovered safely and securely set aside as he wanted to run his own tests and analysis on them to see just how badly he had been shorted on drugs and care.

He knew it had been atrocious, and the surgery was somewhere between butchering live cattle and ritualistic torture so he would not be surprised by the overall results. HOWEVER; he was now much more familiar with the Sith and knew for a fact that Palpatine wasn't simply the urbane dandy who perused the occasional Sith book or data file out of idle cultural curiosity as he had alluded so long ago during a certain night at the Coruscanti Opera.

What Vader suspected was **poison** ; most specifically a _cocktail of drugs_ designed to render him emotionally unstable and put him in a state of suggestibility. In his early years at the Temple of Jedi, the masters often mentioned in the history classes the dreaded art of **Sith Alchemy** and its nefarious uses far more diverse and potent than simple lethal toxins. Anakin would never have been paranoid about Padme betraying him or his plans to the Jedi or having done **unfaithful acts** with Kenobi on their way to Mustafar unless he was well and truly out of his healthy mind. The multiple nightmares and supposed ' _Force visions_ ' about his wife dying in child birth had stopped after Palpatine had brought him here with words of her death on his lips as soon as he could utter them and benefit from the resulting tempest.

 **Anakin was nobody's fool.**

There was an old proverb amongst the Mandalorians; "Do not dare drink from the cup offered by your enemy for if he does not poison your drink, his words them will most assuredly be toxic to your soul."

These beings must have had contact with the Sith Lords of the far past and their alchemic concoctions to have come up with a piece of eternal wisdom like that. He really should have paid more attention in class instead of daydreaming about ships, droids and other stuff. Oh well; as long as Yoda wasn't around to pick up from his mind that Ani finally admitted that the tutors had been right all along, nobody would get _Force choked_ yet.

 **Blue collar Know-how**

 _(Star Wars – The Rebel Theme)_

 **Five days after Mustafar; afternoon, near dinner**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Anakin sat on his supposedly comfortable recliner inside his HBC while the top portion was opened to full elevation. It allowed him to see the new back-lit wall mounted durasteel racks and clear thermoplastic bins that he had taken all day to set up solidly in proper order. He had even taken the time and effort to print out tags for the bins and matching stickers for the shelves where they went to keep anybody ( _himself_ ) from making a mess and never placing things back in place ( _like his workroom back at the Temple_ ). He even had his droid friends find and bring a forgotten but serviceable stout armored cabinet that was set against the wall near the HBC and locked to the wall by a heavy durasteel retention frame like on starships. This meant that he now had a weapons locker with electrical and networking cables inside of it just within reach of his hand when the _Egg_ was opened.

In reality, while the armored cabinet would hold a small assortment of weapons like lightsabers and parts to repair them, small laser and blaster pistols, diverse grenades, military-coded comm-links, emergency copies of his code cylinders and ID paperwork, all that was good for was a useful sham. The closet would be used for much better things. All the interior space had been split in half along the vertical axis; all the weapons shelves were only half the depth of the cabinet and welded to the mobile durasteel plate that served as a false backboard.

When the secret compartment was opened, it revealed in the upper portion a warming unit with clear frontal panel to store a few medications that needed a higher temperature to stay liquid or match his body temperature to not clog his veins when used in the dialysis system. At the very bottom of the cabinet was a medical-grade cooling unit with clear frontal panel to hold other medications and his supply of Vitapaste so it could have a longer shelf life. Also, Anakin had read in a medical journal about the product and they recommended that people with a situation like his drink the stuff cold to avoid irritating the stomach and bowels further.

In the center portion of the secret compartment were a few goodies of his own making. He already had a spare emergency aerator for his mask which he had made himself two days ago. Yes, it was crudely done as his hands worked weirdly and the pain in the connection plates on the stumps was harsh. But, he had persevered and managed something that was usable, even for the long term. Not that he had a choice; the bloody mask was unique and so were Ani's _tweaks_ to it.

Anakin had then gotten intelligent on that lonely evening and hacked the hospital's databases and management systems. Well, hacked was saying a bit much since he did have the second highest clearance in the whole Empire. He might have simply put his _code cylinder_ in the proper slot on the console and then used a couple of splicing apps to anonymize his traces in the network. No need for _Palpy-Baby_ to see already how mobile and lucid his puppet was.

Ani had browsed several things assiduously over the last three evenings in the solitude of the _Egg of Doom_ and it paid off in spades.

Vader had found and quickly obtained through web-order from a paramedical equipment company an amazingly compact all-in-one **portable dialyser & oxygen supply** in case the one in the suit's armored chest stopped working. The thing was in its own briefcase-sized valise and had already been optimized for easy usage by rich business men who traveled alone despite having certain health conditions. It even came with a small data chip containing the user's manual and programs so that diverse types of droids could help set up and operate the device if the living person was unconscious or too handicapped to do it themselves. Now what could he do with such programs? Suggestions anyone? _Eh Eh Eh!_

Other stuff Vader had got online was some medical-grade drugs against graft rejection, antibiotics, broad spectrum anti-toxins and surgery-strength sedatives and pain management narcotics.

Thankfully, his secret numbered incorporation was still running autonomously and he had ample funds to pay for all this without having to hack a bank, create a false account and then wipe it out when he was done. This was due to some clever programming he had created still running in the holonet maintained by three dedicated loyal protocol droids. He had bought the old 3D-4X units then ' _customized_ ' them discretely well afar of the manufacturer's recommendations ( _duh!_ ).

His perfectly legal company was well hidden in an old, decrepit six-storey office building in the lower levels of Coruscant's Under-City. The building might look old and worn out, but in the eleven years since he had purchased it, Anakin had paid for significant renovations, upgrades to security and utilities and bought four astromechs he quickly and remorselessly modified to do maintenance and ' _security_ ' at the same time. He may, perhaps, have recoded the four bulky R5 units into military-grade straight combat bots. With a shield generator. And a small gravity generator to make them float at will. And a miniature cloaking device to give them backstabbing abilities most changelings and Sith assassins would envy.

 **So kretthing what?**

It was the first big major purchase he did with his secretively acquired profits from selling programs, droids and custom parts to boost small personal ships he had hand-crafted over the course of his first 3 years inside the Temple of Jedi. He had been 12 years old at the time so he feared that his brand new ( _to him_ ) building could get ransacked like happened on Tatooine all the time when the criminals tried to run a ' _protection_ ' gig on owners that weren't in the Hutt's immediate employ.

But the thing that the erstwhile Sith Lord was most happy with keeping in his little secret compartment was a Jedi Holocron he saved from his room in the Temple when he sacked it. The holocron of Mistress Healer Nantosta Kaab, reputed gynecologist, reproductive health and neo-natal pediatrics expert from a period of Jedi history about three thousand years before the Ruusan Reformation forbade attachments and marriage to the Jedi cultists.

It was an interesting **philosophical conundrum** to wonder if Yoda or Sidious would punish him the worse for having this thing in his possession as both would have most severely proscribed him from ever even knowing of its existence. Well, too damned bad! Anakin had found the holocron in an old, decrepit knick-knack shop in the lower layers under Coruscant's ' _official street level_ '. He had been on one of his many unauthorized forays out in the city, and most specifically those sectors forbidden to young Jedi initiates as they were too childish, small and vulnerable. They could lose their **purity** if they witnessed such horrifying sights.

Karabast! What a load of Hutt spittle that was. In fact, besides chronic poverty and its assortment of physical ailments, mental illnesses, isolated elderly and abandoned street children, the place was almost cleaner and less hostile than the back alleys of Mos Espa around Wattoo's shop had been. He felt at home and knew exactly how to navigate the people and get what he wanted without causing a scandal or violence. If he got chummy with some club bouncers, drug peddlers, speeder thieves or a few lonely prostitutes along the way, what harm could it do? ( _It's Anakin; what do you think would happen?_ )

So, by utter accident, he had found an old, worn Jedi holocron from one of the best healers the Temple had boasted during the Old Republic before the idiot Tarsus Valorum imposed his reforms unto the Jedi cult in 1000 BBY and turned them into a bunch of emasculated, sterile geldings whose only task was to slavishly come rushing at his every little call. Just like well trained nexus with a shockbolt in the brainstem. Well, Anakin had **NEVER** abandoned his dream of being with his **Angel** at some point in the future so he paid the old human lady her paltry price for the gaudy nightlight she had tagged it as and kept it buried in the pile of mixed droid parts at the back of his large, messy _workshop-cum-apartment_ above the Temple's repair garage.

 **NONE** of the Jedi had ever discovered he had this little gem of knowledge and he kept it buried even deeper after he managed to open it the first time at the age of 11. The healer was a true Jedi of the Light Side but shamelessly used Dark and Grey Side ( _hello, discovery!_ ) techniques of the **Living Force** or the **Unifying Force** philosophies according to the health and needs of her patient's biology. Even back then, she was considered a bit of a maverick, a free thinker and radical innovator that few on the Jedi cult's Council had appreciated at all despite the hundreds of lives she saved.

Anakin had used the Jedi relic religiously ( _hi, hi, hi!_ ) and also researched her history in the Temple archives quietly to avoid suspicions. The woman had lived in a time where wars and civil unrest were commonplace so she had learned a lot of general medicine, urgentology, traumatology and cybernetology to help those Jedi fighters afflicted by grievous injuries that required organ grafts or mechanical limbs.

Sidious would most certainly not appreciate that Vader had a second opinion from a trustworthy professional about his health and life support suit. No, he would certainly not…

"I have **Betrayed** you, Oh _My Master_! Since over fourteen years ago, I have prepared the tools and means of your fall into the shadows you so pridefully claim to command. Go ahead, Oh _My Master_ ; give into your hubris and bigotries, let your blind angles multiply and blind spots aggregate into black holes that suck all your comprehension and wisdom to their infinite depths. For from the dark, impervious depths of this _Egg of Doom_ you have so kindly purveyed upon me, I shall hatch a most vile scheme that will blow away your life to ashes just as it does the same to your mind and feeble dreams."

Anakin set his tools and datapads aside in their small shelves and holsters, split and unfolded the armrest-table and set himself at ease for his dinner; 30 minutes of dialysis during which he could try to center his mind and do some practice at _static meditation_.

It was either that or the holo-news which were just replays of what he had already seen this morning.

 **Technology for the modern man**

 _(Star Wars – The Jedi Theme)_

 **Six days after Mustafar; noon, after lunch**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Anakin was leaning backwards comfortably in his favorite recliner inside his _Egg of Doom_ while browsing the holonet for some medical analysis programs he wanted to download into new little thingies that he had wrought into being.

During his tantrum in the surgery room, he had artfully thrown around and dismembered all four med-droids while carefully avoiding damage to any vital parts in the chests and heads. It had taken him a bit of time and the help from a pair of friendly maintenance droids to whom he had gifted a few programs about droid maintenance and repairs thus making them autonomous to a level Palpatine would never accept. Too bad for _The Master_ that Vader liked his droids autonomous and independent of thought and action. It just meant more enemies against _Palpy-Baby_ and more allies in Vader's camp.

As it was, a certain Darth now had exclusive ownership and loyalty of four highly performant med-droids that would otherwise go to the recycling center for melting. Since the droids had received a personality upgrade courtesy of a few protocol droid OS files he patched together and masterfully fused to their core firmware BIOS and somewhat standard OS, the droids were now aware that they were alive and that this life had been destined for a short trip down a trash shredder inside of 5 days. Suffice it to say that earning the trust and loyalty of said cybernetic sentients was rather easy after that.

The golden-eyed young man looked in disinterest at the right side of his person where one of the new medical assistants he had birthed was busy removing his dialysis lines and pushing to the back of the HBC the system that would feed him both nutrition and medication at fixed 6 hour intervals for the predictable future. At least he could not feel the needles going in or out thanks to the permanent ports installed in both upper arms just for this purpose. The droid then switched out the waste pouch for an empty one and meticulously serviced the waste pump and respirator in the armor's chest plate.

For the first time since Mustafar, Ani felt human again. There was something simply relaxing and soothing about being waited on like this. For most people, droids were stupid machines that were programmed with barely the basics to understand organic interactions and almost no culture. They weren't people. Even 99% of the Jedi do not consider droids as people. Just like almost 91% of Jedi do not consider the army of clones birthed from Kamino as being true people. The basic reason was that they said they did not see any individual differences in the Force signatures of the droids or clones unlike any other thing that was created by Nature such as plants, animals and most sentients. Even the Jedi's most dreaded natural foe, the furry tree lizard called ' _Ysalamiri_ ' from the planet Myrkr was undoubtedly alive, despite its Force canceling aura.

Anakin's strength and acuity with _Force Perception_ allowed him from the age of 5 to sense, feel and identify the Force Signature of every plant, animal, sentient and droids he met. Even clones and alien freaks of unidentified origin butchered with cyber implants like Aurra Sing. Because of this, he really could identify everyone body AND soul, something neither Yoda nor Palpatine can do. Although in Yoda's case, Anakin would venture it was by lack of thinking the method was possible. _His Pruneyness_ had such distaste for non-human sentients and such utter revilement of droids that the man would never use the technique even if it came out of a Sith holocron from Darth Bane himself.

Oh well, whatever the geriatric cruds thought about the philosophies and definitions of sentience was really well passed his capacity to care at the moment.

Concentrating on his holonet browser, Anakin entered into a darkweb site that allowed him to further anonymize not only his point of origin and IP signature but also obfuscate the paths he took and the destination site. Once arrived, he entered a user ID and password in one of the more obscure tongues he could use fluently without using any sort of translation algorithm. This was essential as it was one of the basic security measures he had programmed long ago when he created this phantom archive. Any use of a translator to open the first three lines of protection would see the archive collapse and move to a location chosen randomly from a list of some 7,000 possible public ( **payable** ) industrial-capacity data-storage servers around the Known Galaxy, not just Republic territories ( _now the Empire_ ).

Since the way to find the archive was to locate and follow a series of virtual gold nuggets – cybernetic clues – all around the holonet in sites that he would normally visit as part of his personal leisure time, nobody could really see them unless they were aware and knew what to look for. This meant that his archive of knowledge could be accessed securely from anywhere the holonet reached, without needing specialty hardware or massive servers and terminals at hand. The joys of centralized services…

\- **Memories** -

Ani had seen the Temple of Jedi for exactly what it was the very first moment he laid eyes on it; a fortress dedicated to defend its contents from raiders, thieves, smugglers and, given it was Coruscant, the Capital of the Galactic Republic, politicians and media whores too. Not that he disagreed with those goals. It was the other people being treated as criminals, enemies and threats that made him loathe the Temple and its **cult of Jedi** so much right away.

An old proverb states: " _You hate what is equal or superior to yourself; you loathe what is inferior to your self or morally undeserving of the right to exist in the same world as you and your loved ones._ "

Isn't it saying something about the **Jedi religion and life** that a nine year old slave-child from Tatooine with limited life experience and stilted social skills knew right after just two short months of membership that the **cult** inside the Temple deserved to be loathed with full contemptuous scorn? Anakin had rapidly realized that there was a sickness in the gangrenous hearts and sclerotic souls of the **ecclesiastes of Jedi** and their many ranks and associates outside the Temple walls. He didn't need to remember the full list of their sins, crimes and atrocities in minute detail as he had the written version and several thousand videos of the events safely stored in one segment of his archive. That was the second reason he decided to create and protect a holonet knowledge bank outside the Temple walls.

The first reason was simply that during the first flight from Naboo to Coruscant, he had heard master Jinn and his padawan Kenobi argue about Anakin's chances at being accepted into the ranks of the Temple dwellers. What the two professional liars had not realized was that little Ani was well used to bugging places and wiretapping systems for raw data and assorted blackmail material to keep himself and Shmi alive and fed.

The slave-child heard inside that Nubian cruiser an entire secretive conversation about whether or not the **Council masters of Jedi** would accept him as a padawan directly due to his strength in the Force, oblige a stint amongst the young initiates before that or insist on making him pass at least a year or two with the crechelings to truly insist on indoctrinating him first. Obi Wan Kenobi had the irrepressible gumption to suggest that the Council might find a benefit in paying the Hutts to let Shmi have an accident in the desert so as to properly ' **detach** ' the ' **Chosen One** ' from any unwanted and unauthorized attachments to simplify the indoctrination process as he had no other family or allies elsewhere.

Master Jinn disparagingly replied that the Council would probably just send Ani to the **Agricorps** after **neutralizing his neural pathways to block his access to the Living Force** rather than pay good credits on assassinating a poor woman that was already dead since Ani made Jabba lose that money publicly. The old Jedi expected that the Hutt's wounded pride would resolve the problem for them without dirtying their hands; hence why he specifically forbade Kenobi from trying to save Shmi or include her freedom in any deals with Wattoo.

After hearing that speeder-load of Hutt belly slime, the little boy from the rough, criminal-dominated streets of Mos Espa made a few quick decisions about what he would do next. Of course, in the confines of the Nubian ship he was severely limited as he knew nothing of the systems and had no training in piloting anything in space, especially this big. No, he needed to wait. Damn, that was hard!

They went from Tatooine to the Temple, he got spat on contemptuously by the Council masters as he expected BUT since he was aware and paying attention, he also saw the avarice, desire and despair for the existence of this miraculous ' **Chose One** ' that their **religious prophecies** spoke of. At that moment, Anakin knew that even with the dangerous trip to Naboo to help Queen Amidala free her people, he would be brought back and kept. If not as an honored guest, then as a trainee of some sort just in case he truly was the mysterious ' **Son of the Suns** ' that was foreseen by ancient seers in Ages passed. The Council was too fearful of his potential power, and too much in need of a ' **symbol of hope** ' to rally around to let him pass. They would grab him and then he would need to set himself up to endure what comes afterwards.

Eavesdropping, wiretapping, datamining and splicing were basic skills in the junk trade as over half of the parts moved had electronics or cybernetics attached to them. Therefore, using the same skillset with any place he lived at for any period of time was both a necessity of survival and a source of profit too easy to ignore. Then there was the deep, personal reason he never told anybody yet. He knew from his first preliminary visit to the Temple before the battle in orbit of Naboo that the majority of the Council masters would not support his presence and would in fact cause problems or try to exploit him. Whether they simply exploited his image as a ' **symbol of Light Hope** ', his talents with mechanics to turn a quick credit without paying him due fares or worse, tried to beat and rape him like slaves often had to endure, time alone would tell…

But because he knew the possibilities and the chances of a peaceful life inside the walls were even worse than what he faced to win the Boonta Eve Classic with his cobbled-junk pod, little slave-boy Anakin was motivated to extract, keep available and protect his hoard of knowledge and experience from his travels as much as he could. He had an obligation to put the whole thing out of the Temple walls especially to protect it from the Council who would steal it from him if he was demoted to the Agricorps or kicked out of the Jedi cult altogether. That meant finding a way to lodge it all in the holonet for easy all-worlds access away from the prying eyes of cultists.

The other thing Anakin was afraid of was **losing his mind**. He had after all seen and heard the Jedi cultists use their insultingly named ' **mind trick** ' ( _as in cons indulging in the_ ' **trickery of fools** ') to manipulate the senses, thoughts and memories of people they deemed enemies, useless or just too weak-willed to be related with any otherwise. The innate snobbery and contemptuous lifeview of that **Creed** , the sheer transparent scorn for anything not a member, servant or minion of the **Cult of Jedi Religion** was so bloody publicly exposed that it was a miracle the Republic Security guards hadn't shot them on sight for some of the things they proudly admitted doing without any cares in the world.

Anakin had an absolute necessity to keep his mind, sanity, thoughts and memories protected from the unfeeling manipulations of these criminals at all costs. Creating the cybernetic archive on the holonet and lodging it on a foreign server in a fifth-rate planet was the best, easiest and cheapest way to start his protective system. The rest would be slow to build but it would come. Getting his own large insulated and armored workroom in the Temple hangar at the age of 10 was the kick-off he needed to go faster.

\- **End of Memories** -

Vader took a small pressurized bottle and spritzed some aerosolized water into his parched throat to help with swallowing the little bit of saliva that his glands still produced on occasion. Just another small detail in the myriad of others about his organic shell that needed to get fixed properly. He reviewed what he had queried from his archive and allowed a deformed smile to appear on his injured face.

The plans for the **Gungan water-shield** emitter. This little device had saved Anakin quite a few times during his time inside the Temple walls and even more when he became a padawan at the age of 14. He had also built an emitter of this shield into his ordinary Jedi clothing that allowed him to move around in hard vacuum or in aquatic depths without need for a specialty suit. Of course he lacked the mobility enhancers and gravity systems that professional spacesuits or divesuits had, but that wasn't the point. The point was that he had created a _cheap and efficient_ **survival system** that made him hard to kill or lose off a ship without having to always change into purpose-built accoutrements like all the other Jedi fighters had to on their missions. This shield emitter system had even been spread out to several clone battalions specializing in search  & rescue or junked-ship recycling during the Clone Wars. Let's just say that _little Anikinni_ had secretly made quite a little fortune by designing and then licensing the thing to the Jedi armory through his numbered shell corporation.

And now, for the first time ever, ladies, gentlemen, beings, bureaucrats and sycophants; the creation and assembly of a series of Gungan-inspired water shields around the ever-loved _Egg of Doom_. This to be followed at forced march speed by his exclusive personal version that would be integrated structurally to his life-support suit so he could take off his helmet for a conversation or sustain a breach during combat and still live.

"I am **Betraying** you, Oh _My Master_! Do you feel it in the air as the ebb, eddies and flows of the _Living Force_ shift around your nefarious self? Do you understand that this wall-less prison you have inflicted upon me is but a gantry from which a new devastating weapon will be built and emerge to assault you with terrors and arsenals you know not? Go, little darkling; go and spread your slime and vitriol, but know this! From this damaged husk I shall create a fearsome engine of devastation that will take a thousand years to instill in you the proper respect for your ' _friends_ ' and ' _tools_ ' that you should have displayed all along. Go! Rule, order and command; be cruel to your black, dead heart's contentment. It will last only until I no longer have patience for it. For such is the _Way of the Sith_!"

Vader laughed evilly as the top portion of the HBC lowered, giving him the privacy from cameras and sensors he may not have found with his four consecutive sweeps he did every morning. What he planned to build was going to be quite potent and he didn't want _His Master_ to discover the surprise before he could pull it out on him in the most pain-inducing manner possible.

 **Applied scientific principles of Advanced Medicines**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Seven days after Mustafar; morning, tea time**

 **Imperial medical center, VIP physiotherapy gymnasium**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

( _Tchaikovsky - Casse-Noisettes_ **The Nut Cracker** )

 **PS;** _if you need an explanation of the irony of the music choice, ask an_ **adult** _…_

The lumbering black shape of Darth Vader could be seen on the holo-monitor trying desperately to complete some of the basic empty handed moves of the Jedi beginner's martial arts. It wasn't pretty and seemed as if Vader would **mask-plant** into the mats for the fifth time in less than thirty minutes. Sheev Palpatine was well pleased with this turn of events as it meant that the _bio-limiters_ he had his late lamented med-droids implant ( _not up to date on the news, are we old boy?_ ) in Vader's spine were doing their job of keeping the overgrown whining brat at manageable levels. For now.

Poor malformed Palpatine, _viciously disfigured by the traitorous Jedi in the preliminary attempts to seize power and kill the Republic_ , took his cup of tea from the serving tray and smelled the enticingly rich aromas. Ah! Fit for an emperor! And wouldn't you know, he was one so it fit!

 **Snort!** The fraudster laughed. The people in the streets really were just a bunch of nerfs begging to be led to the appropriate slaughtering stalls. The imbeciles had already built their own abattoir, who was he, Darth Sidious, to stop them from enjoying the poisonous fruit of their deleterious labors?

Laughing again, _His Pruneyness_ watched as Vader, sans cape, attempted another rather basic forward kick only to pirouette like a Twi'lek whore around a stage pole in a seedy Hutt bar before slamming himself on a barbell bench at groin level in such a way that he tumbled over the stationary barbell already in position and **mask-planted** into the padding of the elongated bench then rolled sideways to the ground, bringing the barbell down on top of his chest, stalling the respirator for all of four Force-cursed seconds before it started again. Darth Sidious could not hold back a wince of sympathetic reaction at seeing his apprentice get _balls'ed_ until he reminded himself with an evil cackle that Vader was no longer able to lead by his balls anymore. The poor ' _boy_ ' wasn't quite ' _himself_ ' in that area anymore. **Mwu ah ah ah**!

Darth Sidious laughed unrepentantly at the miseries of his apprentice at learning to walk again since the prosthetics were **voluntarily badly built** , _wrongly adjusted_ and should hurt almost half as bad as the original operation every time he put weight on them or moved in a way that resembled walking, running, jumping or any kind of leg motion at all. _Palpy-Baby_ pretty much thought that his apprentice would either die of madness from the pain or become an insanely unfeeling killing machine as he endured through what he would need to just to make his body move at all. **Mwu ah ah ah**!

 **Eeeuuurkkk!** Palpatine was so caught in his laughter that he choked himself with his extremely expensive, luxurious imported tea from the forests of Kashyyyk until he had to _Force-slap_ himself in the back to clear out his pipes from the obstruction. Calming himself from his near _self-Force-choke_ , he took a few seconds to chuckle darkly at Vader's pathetic attempts at getting off the floor where he fell and closed the channel. While incredibly entertaining, and a clear proof that laughter was indeed medicine of a sort, the newly crowned **Emperor of Man** as he thought of himself set to wrangle the one thing he seemed to have forgotten in this whole kriffing upheaval of birthing his Empire.

 **Paperwork.**

No matter how many bloody bureaucrats he befriended, paid off, intimidated or killed, there were more and more damned pieces of flimsi accumulating on his desk than there were hair on a shedding Wookie in summer! Karabast! Will it ever end? At this point Palpatine wasn't even sure if the Death Star, once completed, would have enough fire power to annihilate such a pileup…

At that moment, on that thought, a cold shiver of dread oozed down his Imperial Spine…

As Palpatine, self appointed Grand Master Sith, was practically choking on his tea in evil glee, a certain Vader, anointed Darth amongst the Sith, was lying peacefully and blissfully unaware of anything in the entire multiverse.

 **Kreth! That was gooood stuuuffff!**

After having spent a small portion of the morning before breakfast to hijack and reprogram the med-center's security cameras and several secret sensors at tactical emplacements, Vader had taken reception via droid allies of the delivery of three very important items that would make his life far easier to live. A brand new pair of cybernetic legs. A brand new pair of cybernetic arms and, you guessed it! A brand new pair of organic biochemically adjusted animal lungs for a transplant. The pain managers _cum_ nerve boosters had already been finished yesterday just after supper so he had those in the operating theater already.

As _His Master_ was contemplating the **virtual avatar** make a fool of itself in comedic manners fit for a child's cartoon, the real flesh and cybers Vader was on the operating table, in the same room where he was butchered, but only after the place had undergone four days of intense renovations and equipment upgrades at the silent, reliable maniples of Vader-configured droids.

Anakin had taken the time to scan his stumps and, with the aid of the med-droids, had used the medical instruments design software he found on-line to re-sculpt the connector plates, sockets and bio-fusion jointings before setting out the milling instructions to the hospital's fabrication department over night. Since the entirety of operations was managed remotely under the name of an existing doctor who worked at the center but was then carried out in the basement workshops by diligent artisan droids, not one soul alive knew about it besides Ani.

All Vader had to do was reroute the cameras and feed them a special little program he had cooked up to show an almost indestructible, fumbling around like a clown in a circus show Sith Lord wannabe and _Palpy-Baby_ would never even try to think that his apprentice was actually anything but the incompetent, mis-coordinated buffoon he always believed him to be.

 _Snort!_ "Notice to _My Master_ ; the best way to lie is to feed the target the truth, but one piece at a time, in a sequence that matches your plans and goals better than reality does. When the target accepts and enjoys the experience, repeat until the **Betrayal** is complete." Vader thought silently to himself as the most potent medical sedative on the open market worked through his veins in preparation for open chest surgery to take out the original burned, ruined lungs and replace them by the new baby bantha lungs that were specifically genetically regressed to fit his biology. Guaranteed for a decade or his money back. God but you have to love medical mercenaries and immoral, unethical purveyors of cutting edge biochemistry for evil tyrants. They sure knew how to deliver! Paying Aurra Sing to get the names and contact info for her implantologists was a hellavu good investment to date.

 **The sequence of events would now be simple:**

First, a pair of droids would install two devices shaped as artificial vertebrae in his lower neck just above the collarbones and at the base of the skull, above even the first normal spine bones. These were **Pain Managers** and they did exactly what the name said. He was having two installed because, you know, _Palpy_ and Sith lightning… And tortures of the most inhumane sorts… And battle injuries that hurt like getting chewed on by a hungry reek…

Anyways… After that, at the same time, two droids would work his little ' **black lung syndrome** ' situation and the other two would work on his legs, then on his arms. Walking around was critical to save his damaged miserable life and be mobile for Padme's Royal State Funeral in five days. He needed to be up and running _post haste_. Since he already had his right arm at almost 85% capacity anyways, the left one was less important. It would be nice to have all four limbs in workable shape but the legs really were the absolute priority in such a way that it was only because he had four droids available that the lungs were not done at the very end after all mobility issues were settled.

Tomorrow morning when he woke up inside his _Egg of Doom_ , connected to his dialysis machine, he would be able to breathe on his own and move around within minutes after a few initial shocks and settling onto the newly milled prosthetics. Later, a few tweaks to the length ratchets, adjusting the movement amplitude restriction screws, and a few other minutiae and he would be ready for some real physiotherapy to begin. Not that _Palpy_ would be allowed to see his real progress, let alone full capacities; the virtual double was doing such a good job, might as well get some light-years out of it.

Anakin couldn't keep the smile from his face even in drug induced sleep; _His Master_ 's insistence that he wear a **Mask** and a wall-less self-carried prison would backfire against him and all his plans in a way that you truly had to be Sith to appreciate the ironic beauty of it all.

"I am **Betraying** you, _My Master_ … Even as I sleep and dream of undying love and loyalty to Padme and our family, I scheme and undo your **Magnum Opus, Vader,** as if it were nothing but a cheap food processor unit bought at a discount on the floor of a _Republic Appliances Limited_ store. Do you approve my bold treachery yet?"

Anakin Skywalker slept on, smiling peacefully as the med-droids cut into his flesh and removed bones, nerves and veins to make place for the new custom designed cybernetics and organic lungs. When the _Egg of Doom_ opened tomorrow, it would hatch a brand new animal indeed.


	4. Chapter 4

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

 **WARNING;** the language level of this one is not too particularly trashy when we consider a story based on starships, pirates, soldiers, law breakers and politicians enough to fill several Death Stars. However, as I always warn people who read my work: this language was pretty much normal in the school yard 30 years ago when I was a teenager. So, how can you have such a thin skin and be part of the same culture on the same continent if this is really that offensive to you? Where did you spend the last few decades, if you can't take a few hard words from the mouths of kids when these words have been around since before World War I?

 **Author's note:** for this chapter Anakin / Vader is still in the re-adaptation phase of his recovery but it goes towards the more physical part now that the critical body  & organic issues have been settled. Still, the slave-boy must _polish and honor his_ **MASK of VADER** as per the wishes of _The Master_ whom expects a performance to be played at his behest. Thump the majordomo's staff, roll the drums, quench the candles and fold back the curtains; the _Great Comedy of the Imperial Puppet_ is about to unfold.

 **Star Wars**

 **HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT**

 **Chapter 4; Thespians Anonymous (** _That's what the MASK is for_ **)**

 **Food for thoughts**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Nine days after Mustafar; morning, at breakfast**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Inside the stygian depths of the dreaded drab grey _Egg of Doom_ there dwelled an inhumane, evil voracious beast, slavering away at the bones of its victims to feed its monstrous appetites.

 **YOU** try to eat something solid when half your teeth are nothing but cracked jagged stumps a quarter their original size or reduced to charred little bone shards imbedded in the bottom of the pits in your gums. I can promise that you'll be working at it hard just as much. Then try to eat some sliced shaak ham imported from Naboo for breakfast. That one wasn't the best idea Anakin had had in a while. Any ham was a bit rubbery to begin with, then cooked it became somewhat tough to masticate.

Ani had been so high from the success of the surgeries with his lungs, legs and arms two days back, not to mention the **Pain Managers** that now reduced all his pain coming from anywhere in his body, that he had wanted to celebrate with something that Padme had enjoyed a whole lot when she was pregnant.

 _Sigh_ …

Ani liked meat. A lot. As a growing boy ( _he was only 23 years old, dammit!_ ) and a poor slave, rations of anything had been hard to procure at all times, even the cheap powders to put in the automated food synthetiser that produced only liquid or paste meals. But meat, though; meat was even more expensive, and tough to find. All Tatooine domestic animals were used primarily as cargo movers, personal transport or even as power for rotary mills in the outlands. You had to be really rich to obtain any kind of fresh meat or else you owned an animal and butchered it when the creature reached the end of its usable life.

It's no surprise that several groups like the Tusken raiders and the Jawa happened to be cannibalistic in order to fulfill the minimum protein requirements of their biologies in such an environment. It wasn't unheard of that certain parts of some towns found the dismembered, de-fleshed remains of dangerous ruffians and violent criminals dumped in back alleys when economic times were so hard that slave owners and low-wage employers had to cut back on the food allowances part of the salaries.

 _Sigh_ …

Anakin had used his ' _official_ ' bank account as **Vader** , a brand new _thingie_ courtesy of Palpatine's ever officious minions, and ordered some Naboovian specialties from a nearby market that he knew kept stock due to Padme and _Palpy-Baby_ being in such high view at the senate for the last couple of years. His newly acquired protocol droid, again bought with ' _official_ ' money from an outlet store over the holonet, was programmed with a lot of culinary styles, even a few that Ani had asked for specially. It wasn't like the average droid to be programmed with the knowledge or skills to create Naboovian festival feasts or funeral commemoration meals. But a certain _Sith Master_ expected his defective puppet to be depressed, despondent and dramatically downed for a good long while to come so he had to make it look as if he still were. If it tasted good and boosted his spirits along the way instead…

 _Sigh_ …

So Anakin had made a ' _small error of logic_ ' in thinking that a new droid with fresh foodstuffs could help him celebrate his passing the half-way point on the scale to a full health. The breakfast was cooked to perfection, just as good as if C-3P0 had done the deed. Then Anakin tried to bite and chew…

 _Yeah, not a great idea_ …

At least the **Pain Managers** had kept the lancing pain in his damaged gums from paralyzing him or sending him into a fit of some sort. Then, Anakin had an idea. He wanted the damned breakfast and had earned the damned thing so he would eat it and curse his weird bowels along the way! He signaled for the protocol droid to come by the side of the HyperBaric Chamber so he could adjust the repertoire of culinary styles just a tad… And voila!

 _Sigh… Such pleasures of the flesh!_

Anakin was no great foodie or even that much of a culinary critic despite all the traveling he did in the last nine years of his life since becoming padawan-learner and having the opportunity to follow his training-master around the Galaxy. Jedi on the road usually ate rather frugally. At least Kenobi did. They had carried their own dry ration bars as a reliable basic sustenance although Anakin tended to munch through those as if they were junk food. That could explain why he got so tall so fast… Otherwise road-bound Jedi liked to eat the good old **standard meal-ready-to-eat** ( _MRE_ ) the concept of which had been created before the Galactic Republic was even born some 50-odd millennium ago. If all else fails, they could eat at local restaurants if they had the money, the time and the need to meet somebody for information, manipulation or intimidation purposes.

So Ani, like most Jedi raised at the Coruscanti Temple, could eat pretty much anything due to being trained to just shovel it in, but he had precious little knowledge or practice with cooking styles and preparing stuff. Hence the benefits of family-in-law and friends with social standing above his own. He remembered one time several years ago when he had gone to the Senate Rotunda to visit his _Dear Friend Palpatine_ at his office as the man had asked he do whenever he went off-world and returned. It was supposedly to ascertain his health and welfare since nobody else from his family was present to stand in as a proper guardian to do such verification. Well on that one return home occasion, it had been lunch and _Palpy_ had ordered something for them both; mon calamarian tartar fresh from the Rotunda kitchens which served only the offices of the permanent officials and topmost bureaucrats in the building.

Anakin used the memory from the good event to add a few programs to his droid and have him pre-cut then hash all the solid, tough parts of his breakfast to present them as minced portions, tartar-style.

 _Sigh… Such pleasures of the flesh!_

As he ate his now soft and _chewable-without-teeth_ foodstuffs, our _happy Sith Lord_ in training contemplated the problems posed by his _Dear, Beloved Master_. He may have been thinking about that to avoid considering how the second most powerful and fearsome man in the new Galactic Empire of Man was actually eating what amounted to either old-people-porridge or baby-food-puree; the droids wouldn't tell and he wasn't asking.

 _Sigh_ … And no, he wasn't a bloody Diva, sighing all the time! He was just enjoying the feel of his new lungs and not having the damned helmet on his head all the time.

Hummmmm… **Diva** … An evil shit-eating grin spread on Anakin's ravaged face as he began to cogitate something of such base and foul depravity that even a Sith would enjoy it. He certainly did.

Somewhere inside the Senate Rotunda, a _Wrinkly Evil Old Crone_ shuddered as his thoughts turned towards **Betrayals** and his handicapped apprentice in the medical center. He should check up on him just to make certain the young whelp hadn't developed ideas above his station in life and Sithdom.

 **Choosing a script**

 _(Star Wars – The Rebel Theme)_

 **Nine days after Mustafar; morning; Low Tea (** _hereafter renamed: Senatorial Tea Hour_ **)**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Now, to anyone who would ask, Anakin would gladly tell you that he wasn't a music fan. He hadn't had much chance to listen to a lot of varieties during his misspent young life. Besides the fact that musical performances on Tatooine were usually in cantinas, taverns and strip clubs, the Jedi cult very obviously did not approve of anything that could deter from, _what else?_ , meditation or reading about meditation techniques. **Bunch of bantha poo-doo piles…**

Since he became a padawan with the afferent freedoms ( _meaning he was sent out of the Temple for errands and following his master on the road_ ) he got to hear, see and experience the greater Galactic Culture which the Temple's many librarians and cybernetic nannies tried very hard to not let inside the walls. Not that Ani ever let something as idiotic and limited as a filtering software on the holonet consoles keep him from seeing or accessing what he wanted. His mechanical and cybernetic skills were the envy of several adult knights and masters for a reason, after all.

So, it wouldn't surprise anybody who knew him that Ani preferred working in two distinct styles; silently when designing a device or formulae for a chemical or element and with a whole lot of loud music when he was actually crafting or building. And, okay, when he was driving a speeder or interceptor at breakneck speed through dense traffic around Coruscanti road jams.

There was a reason that Obi Wan Kenobi systematically refused to ride with him when they were on their leisure time. His crazy piloting habits had been quite handy to insure his ' _minder_ ' did in fact ' _mind_ ' his presence for entertaining flights around the planet when they were home at the Temple. That meant that _little Anikinni_ was left quite alone to his own devices for great long periods of time and those empty slots in his schedule explain how he managed to have a relationship and marriage under the noses of his keepers during years.

 **Note;** they weren't keeping very hard or much at all…

Therefore, it would definitely be a surprise to see our erstwhile Sith Apprentice lounging in his recliner inside his closed _Egg of Doom_ , which he had in fact taken a strong liking to, as he browsed the holonet listings of the best operas, classical orchestras and musical theater performances. He was doing so with the kind of focus he used to give hunting _seppies_ in an asteroid field during the Clone Wars, which was truly out of character considering that during his youth, the music he favored was considered ' _hard_ ' with lots of synthesizers, electric guitars and drumbeats. Maybe being so close to Padme, Palpatine and the _bourgeoisie_ in the Senate had finally rubbed off some higher culture on him?

 **Naaahhh…**

The ' **lovable** ' ( _Padme said so!_ ) overgrown brat ( _calumnies and defamation, I say!_ ) was preparing a practical joke the likes of which even the Temple crèche-masters had not been the prey of. And that was saying something as Ani had been a terror with his mechanically empowered, remote controlled pranks. Then again, his current prey would do to him a lot worst than send him out of the classroom or spank his clothed bottom with a ruler before making him stand in the corner for the rest of the period.

 **Snort!** As if a child raised as a slave in Hutt territory would ever be afraid of stuff like that!

Well, there were those few **really horrible teachers** who enjoyed being cruel towards him… They would send him to his little crecheling bedroom to meditate on his wrongdoings and write a page-long essay on why it was wrong and why he wouldn't do it again. **Meditate!** _A child!_ And they had the gumption to say they were being merciful with him! "Bastards, the lot of them!" he thought angrily.

Anakin pouted in a most manly way ( _Snort!_ ) as he contemplated the lack of either _style_ or _punch_ in the musical arrangements he had browsed for the last two hours. Now since there were literally millions of member solar systems in the Republic (Empire) he had realistically concentrated on the cultures that _Palpatine_ knew about and had a minimal understanding of. Also, Anakin himself would have an easier time setting up the whole thing so it was believable, or at least executable in his condition.

He entered in the search system some wider parameters and saw a couple more performance styles being listed: burlesque, pantomime and… What's this? An old directory of Alderaani silent theater accompaniment pieces, **slapstick comedies** ( _whaaat?_ ) and children's puppet shows.

" **Yes! Yeeesss!** I have you now! **Mwu ah ah ah**! You shall now know the full and ineluctable despair of your folly at having caged me, Oh _My Master_! I may be forced to wear your **Mask of Vader** but that is not my soul, nor my life! Now, we will see who plays the puppet to the tune of whom!" Anakin exulted in the privacy of his HBC, luxuriating in the fact he could now give a good and proper evil cackle without chocking himself to death. These baby bantha lungs sure were a decent purchase!

Somewhere in the Senate Rotunda, sitting on a pseudo-throne before a large circular window shaped like a great Eye, a wrinkled hand stilled as a tremor of dreadful anticipation shook the frail deformed frame it was attached to. Sitting carefully the highly expensive porcelain cup back on its saucer lest it spill the exquisite imported tea, the old man rubbed his wrists and hands to appease the arthritic pains, cursing the blasted Jedi master whose soul was blacker than his low-borne skin. " **Karabast!** " the hooded figure swore lowly, emitting a short pulse of Dark-Side energy. If the _stupid child Anakin_ had interfered sooner, Sidious would not be **near-handicapped** because of _overpowering himself_ with his own Sith lightning like an ill trained amateur.

Taking up again his warm tea, a superfluous brand imported from the planet Chryzzobhal in the Outer Rim, he brought the porcelain vessel to his lips with great care to not spill any on his robes like an uncouth youngling in a hurry to finish his meal for more time on a video game. A second tremor of gleeful Dark anticipation coursed through his frame causing his spine to shiver, sending the reverberations to his arm and the cup at the end. – _Slosh!_ – " **! E'e Inecta !** " he swore crassly in the lowest Naboovian dialect that wasn't originated from non-humans. Even in anger, there was decorum and proper station in life to respect; especially towards himself. He was _Emperor of Man_ , not an illegal _humanoid_ migrant dockhand in a semi-legitimate passenger ferry out of Mandalorian space.

Taking the time to scan the ebb, eddies and flows of the Dark-Side of the Force, he felt them concentrate most balefully around the med-center, gathering as the winds and thermal currents of a great tropical storm. His apprentice was preparing something, but what? Unless the air-headed, blond bimbo of a little _Diva_ had thrown a _manly tantrum_ again? _Hummm…_

 **A most ignoble invitation to come to dinner**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Nine days after Mustafar; noon, lunch time**

 **Imperial Senate Rotunda; office of the** _Emperor of Man_

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Despite being The most elevated, exalted and sovereign being in the entirety of the Galactic Empire of Man, His most Cultivated, Majestic Highness still had the same requirements as the rest of his subjects; namely the need for physical sustenance in the shape of edible food. Unlike at least one subject who had to content himself of liquids by his veins or Vitapaste once a week orally, that was. Palpatine planned to enjoy his mealtime in serene and meditative calm today as there were great preparations under way for his trip to Naboo with Vader for the funeral of the Late Great Queen Amidala.

And yes, Darth Sidious was the meditative type. He had gotten to his positions in family, society, government and life in general by taking the time to ponder, reflect, cogitate and intellectualize the events and situations around his person and many plots, not like his hotheaded ( _OH, the irony of that!_ ) young apprentice who had the brightness but, alas, also the attention span of a lit matchstick ( **Mwu ah ah ah!** _Oh the cruelly delicious irony!_ )

The elderly statesman leaned on his cane of polished black Korriban ebony with crystal pommel far more than he wanted anybody to realize. The attack from Mace Windu was already a week and a half back but he still had many tremors and motor control problems to deal with. His nerves were not regenerating as he wanted them to despite the thrice daily injections of Kolto-Pramidenasizine. He was reduced to using the Force to steady his shivering limbs to employ micro-fine movements without causing embarrassing spills of food at meals or dropping flimsiplast folios during meetings.

Thank the Sith ghosts he could still use a fresher without help. If he were so diminished that he needed an assistant to visit the bathroom, he would consider taking a prolonged health vacation or, if that was too dangerous still, he would have to eat his pride and ask Vader to build something discrete like a half-size protocol droid or maybe even the sort of miniature assistance robotic arms that could be worn like a belt under his wide airy robes of office.

Palpatine mumbled darkly to himself inside the vast shadowed depths of the cowl of his robe as he laboriously climbed the five decorative steps of his office to reach his demi-throne where he preferred eating as he had the view from the panoramic window to entertain him. The holonet was such an unredeemable pile of nexu leavings, even the Hutts avoided wasting their time watching anymore, and they knew a good vice when they saw one; so THAT was saying something!

As he sat at his desk, a small innocuous message flashed in his inbox. It was from Vader. What did the half-trained jarhead want now? Opening the message he saw it was a simplistic written TXT message, no sound or image at all. It was written in the bland, inoffensive style of classified ads everywhere in the Galaxy at large. Sidious felt his blood freeze then boil as he read along the text.

"Venerable Sith Grand Master having fallen to the depredations of foes, **Betrayals** and Time requires permanent living assistance for his domicile, place of work and business travels. Candidates for consideration must be human, white skinned; gender  & age unimportant if skills compensate for youth. Preferably Forceless, otherwise be ready to be Apprenticed as **Sith Altar servant**. No need to be Evil but would be better for your health  & sanity given the people and religious context involved. Medical skills and licenses valid throughout the Empire mandatory; specialties in traumatology, torture, anesthesiology and geriatrics all imminently desirable and the employer is willing to foster your studies in such if hired. Criminal records not a problem ( _could be a good reference, even_ ) and passed employer references are not that important as you will be mind-scanned daily to ascertain loyalty and sobriety. All payments, employee benefits, vacation scheduling and such to be handled by the Cabinet of the Emperor of the Galaxy. All employee complaints and litigations to be submitted to the hiring agent; Dreaded Dark Lord of the Sith, his Most Munificent Excellence Darth Vader, Grand High Archiduke of the Empire of Man, First Heir of Palpatine and Inheritor of the Throne of Man. Address all correspondence to the Imperial Senate Rotunda, Cabinet of Lord Vader. Position open now."

Palpatine pursed his lips in Darksome musings as he contemplated the depths of depraved vengefulness that his Apprentice could sink to. It was exactly the sort of **petty vengeance** Palpatine expected Anakin to use: wrought in that childishly minimalist style of his that he couldn't grow out of. The problem of course was that the damned thing could cast doubts about his health and durability that would provoke untold damages to his reputation as a fearsome leader of men and war-machines if it got out.

Then Palpatine saw the small blurb in the bottom of the message that said: "Payment processed and received. Thank you for your trust in our services. Your ad will run in the **249,725 publications** of our consortium for a period of 12 weeks, every day as of today. Sales dept.; **The Galactic Syndicate of Newswire Corporations, Unlimited** ®."

The receipt was dated four days ago.

The ad was already running and receiving around 200 applications daily.

Palpatine saw blue, then purple, then Black as the heart of a feasting gundark.

" **VAAADEEERRR!** "

Anakin saw the incoming line on his holocom system and pushed a button; direct to voice mail.

 **Shooosh** \- "You have reached the Helmet of Darth Vader" – **Shooosh –** "I am presently unavailable to answer you as I am tormenting a rebel prisoner" – **Shooosh** – "Or tormenting an incompetent soldier of our ill-trained navy" – **Shooosh** – "Or even just meditating to avoid the everlasting pain of my injured body." - **Shooosh -** "Leave a message at the sound of excruciating misery from my victim." - **Shooosh -** " **Mwu ah ah ah!** - _Noooo! Say it ain't soooo! Aaaahhh!_ " - **Shooosh - Beeep!**

There was a small pause of uncertainty at the other end of the line when a voice that Anakin knew quite well from years of close contact emitted from the speakers placed around the HBC like an incredibly good home theater system. ( **WHAT?** _He was rich, single and had no life! He had the right to get himself a little bit of enjoyment in his life, didn't he?_ )

The dark, menacing voice of _His Master_ came through, subliminally promising much hardship and suffering in its soft urbane tonalities. Not that it promised anything else whatever tones the kriff-wad used, but then again, he did get WORSE on occasions… " _My dear Vader_ … I just received the confirmation of your… So very _thoughtful_ advertisement to find an assistant for my personal needs. You can rest assured _my dear young friend_ , that the rumors of my ill-health are well beyond exaggerated by my enemies. I have no requirements for a live in nursemaid. While I do appreciate the efforts that you made in your… **Sooo gentle, affectuous inquiries** … To get someone to be by my side when you start absenting yourself for your own work, it will not be necessary at all. To whit, I will be paying you a **small friendly visit** at the hospital tonight for dinner to _personally establish_ just how **healthy and autonomous** I still am so that you can rot in pieces, _hemm, hemm_ – **cough** -… I mean _rest in peace_ as you travel. See you later this evening. Oh, and _stay casual_ ; no need to **dress up** for me."

Shaking his head in Dark amusement at the very thinly veiled threats and that particularly blunt jab about his life-support suit and getting dressed-up for a party, Anakin lounged backwards into his recliner, raising the legrest and taking a deep soothing breath of medicated air. "So the bait is taken; so the trap closes. Come, _My Master_ ; come and we shall indeed have dinner together tonight. I will have your dignity for main course, your sanity for dessert and the dregs of your soul as a digestive liqueur at the end of it all. _Such is the way of the Sith_."

 **Adeste Dramatis Personae; the actors arrive**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Nine days after Mustafar; afternoon, High Tea (** _hereafter renamed: Admiralty Tea Hour_ **)**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Darth Vader, Most Frightfully Dreaded Dark Lord amongst the Sith ( _soon to be acknowledged as such_ ), stood at slightly crooked parade attention in the lobby of the Imperial Medical Center. He was accompanied by a matte blue protocol droid and four white armored stormtroopers with decals on the upper left chestplates that spelled out their legion and department; 207th infantry, close support battalion.

The four grunts were ill at ease in the presence of the unknown and unpredictable superior officer. And there was NO saying he wasn't superior; not with the high-priced VIP room he lived in or the kinds of amenities he had on call. There wasn't a droid in the place that didn't salute or acknowledge his passage somehow, and about a quarter of the living medical staff knew his official Title and Name but the administrators and service directors all seemed pretty much in the dark about his actual job. It was a weird situation but any soldier with a modicum of survival instinct just **KNEW** that this **BOSS** was bad business for everybody around.

A long night sky blue shuttle with three short wings alighted on the building's principal arrival pad, the massive round crest on the wings and sides of the fuselage made it bluntly clear who was visiting the establishment this afternoon. THAT explained the afflux of suit-clad brown-nosers and flimsi-pushers swamping the lobby as much as they could while leaving around Vader about twelve feet of space as empty as hard vacuum.

Stationed on the mezzanine above the foyer of the lobby, the lieutenant with the colored shoulder board and extra markings on his armored chestplate placed a finger to the side of his helmet and called out to all his soldiers around the building and surrounding outer perimeter. "Alright, you cads! Get your buckets on tight cuz it's a bumpy one! We have _Divine Prune_ on deck! I repeat, _Divine Prune_ is on the premises! It's an unannounced visit so any threat should have to scramble worse than us to get here but keep your eyes and sensors open! He looks in a bad mood already; don't give him a reason to space you! Over!"

After getting the appropriate call-backs from his troops, the lieutenant tried to find his balls so he could gird them and stay focused on the job at hand. From what he had heard through the scuttlebutt, Vader had already killed off or maimed about two dozen people in the last three days. Now, that doesn't compute because they would be short handed in a rather glaring way if he had, but still… With the number of soldiers on hand since the end of the Clone Wars, who's to say where they stashed them all?

 _(Albert Ketelbey – In a Persian Market witch choir)_

The mid-rank officer watched stressfully as the Imperial Procession of his August Majesty and six Red Guards left the shuttle via the rear ramp and walked slowly towards the hospital's main entrance. The supervisor was pissed when he realized that the procession wasn't walking slowly because of decorum but truly because the Principal had a cane and really needed to lean on it at almost every step. The **Emperor was gimped** and nobody had bothered to tell them they might have to carry him out in case of attack. They needed extra people and hover-equipments for that to get done safely! WHO was it that fucked the bantha like that?

The armored troopers presented arms when the Emperor finally entered the lobby of the hospital, the elderly man taking the time for a breath after the effort of walking upwards along the slight slope from the landing pad two hundred feet away. Leaning on his cane pommel with both hands, the deeply cowled figure was not easily discernable as anything but a mobile robe. Only the wrinkled hands clutching the crystal handle of the wooden stick gave any indication of a living entity inside the vestments.

From the mezzanine's vantage, it seemed as if Vader was waiting for something to happen and it did; Palpatine advanced about five feet in front of his six guards ( _2 rows of 3_ ) and stood straighter, setting his hands and cane behind his back. Vader walked unevenly towards the Emperor and slowly, like a great massive tree in the forests of Kashyyyk falling of rot and old age, knelt on his right knee like the Knights of Old before the exalted presence of the Emperor, using his right hand on the carpeted ground to stabilize his massive body.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh - Shooosh** \- The noise of the respirator in Vader's armor filled the hospital lobby, almost as if it had somehow become louder, more pervasive… As if it were inside the minds rather than just a sound…

 **Shooosh** – "Welcome to my humble place of residence, Lord Emperor. What is Thy bidding, _My Master_?" – **Shooosh** – Asked the deep baritone voice of something much, much more than just human or even divine… A demon… At that moment, standing on the mezzanine, the stormtrooper lieutenant knew he was witnessing History being written and a Monster being born unto the World. The gigantic form of Darth Vader rose unsteadily to its feet, staggering for a brief second before steadying, hands clasped behind his back over his folded great black cape.

The Imperial Procession with Vader and blue droid added began the slow and laborious route through the hospital towards the lifts and then to Vader's stateroom in the highest levels of the edifice. The Emperor would probably be present until late in the night, well passed the Lieutenant's shift change so he had to warn his replacement and make certain the emergency evacuation plans for the Emperor were modified throughout the entire army or they would get screwed by a rebel attack some point soon.

 **The stage is set; fold the curtains**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Nine days after Mustafar; afternoon, High Tea (** _hereafter renamed: Admiralty Tea Hour_ **)**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Sheev Palpatine, His Most Exalted Highness, The Emperor of Man, walked slowly ( _he only had one speed of late_ ) towards the doorway to Lord Vader's stateroom. The small pause inside the lift as they went up the edifice had been far too short and still far too mobile for his liking. He wished the Medical Center had thought to build bigger elevators like the ones in the luxurious buildings along Republica Boulevard. Those had lifts big enough to have a 'U' shaped bench for several people to sit during the ride and you could even ask the machine to go slowly to have a bit more time on your seat.

Arming himself with as much patience as any Darth ever owned, Palpatine grit his teeth and took every step in painful silence, keeping himself from voicing his discomfort out of sheer stubbornness and the clear desire to not appear injured or weakened before his apprentice. One never knew when a hothead ( _Hi hi hi, the irony!_ ) would decide that enough time had wasted and go gung-ho on his poor Sith hide without clearly considering the consequences or side-effects. Oh, Force! Why could he not be blessed with a proper apprentice like all the other Darth of Bane's long and noble lineage?

 **Shooosh** \- "We have arrived, _My Master_." – **Shooosh – "** Welcome to my humble accommodations for the time being. Although I guess I shall be leaving soon given I am almost mobile again." – **Shooosh -** Said apprentice spoke quite uselessly in an elaborate show of the painfully obvious.

" _Honestly, why did I want him again? Ah yes, the Force potential he had. Wasn't that much in the end. Maul would have been better; less powerful but more intelligent, more driven and far more evil too._ " Sidious mentally griped while _Force-Shielding_ his mind to keep his thoughts to himself. No reasons to have Anakin start a _tantrum_ so soon in the evening.

The heavy armored doors opened to allow passage into the luxuriously appointed rooms that Palpatine had designed and decorated just for the right mix of **bluntness** so Anakin could understand he was being _disrespected_ and **subtleties** because Palpatine just couldn't do so much bluntness all at once and not _feel his IQ dropping by the mile_ with each crudeness he allowed to exist. He had needed to counter-balance the grossly obvious things with a few _truly Sith insults and threats_ carefully hidden around the suite. Their supper conversation should reveal how much the young Skywalker had missed.

The _much beloved majesty_ ( _hemm, hemm_ …) was so deep inside his thoughts that he missed the addition of a new very thick ' **Welcome** ' mat just 6 inches inside of the doorway. Said mat was actually attached to the floor by a series of pressure snaps to keep it in place while being easy to remove for cleaning.

( _Charlie Chaplin; The kid – His morning promenade_ )

Of course, the welcome mat on its own would not be that dangerous and Sidious might maybe look down to avoid the trap, if a certain Sith apprentice hadn't done a few things to it. Such as set in very thin transparent wires that would stick themselves to the soles of his shoes by their glued ends and do such a dragging effect on his foot that he would faceplant in the hard, black tiled floor he had spent so much time designing.

" **Haaaaaaaa!** " and smash! Crack!

Ergo; in walks the old man, lost in his mind, his shoes get gummed on the carpet, he loses balance while windmilling his arms and cane quite dramatically before a bone-jarring drop to the floor where his nose is put severely out of joint. Ensues pain, gnashing of teeth and blood rivulets from said nose.

" **Oooowww!** Vader! What happened? My guards… Where are my Reds?"

 **Shooosh** \- "I **apologize most profoundly** , Oh _My Master_. Truly, I am **beside myself with grief** at your situation." - **Shooosh** Deadpanned the still standing and not helpful at all apprentice. **Shooosh -** "I would give you a hand but my prosthetics… Well you know…" – **Shooosh –** "They are not well adjusted and my balance…" - **Shooosh** Vader explained blithely as he gestured a gloved hand towards the fallen man on the floor.

Blinking the dust from the floor out of his eyes ( _tears of pain and shock_ ) the Emperor of Man tried to look around for his precious Red Guards but could not see them. "Vader, where exactly are my Red Elite? Have they not come in? Why am I alone?" asked the now anxious monarch. This smelled of a setup! Perhaps his apprentice was indeed jumping the gun as he feared.

 **Shooosh** \- "They are well bred and well educated men, all of them, _My Master_." – **Shooosh –** "As this is quite literally **my home** for the present they have arrayed themselves outside the door" – **Shooosh –** "rather than barge into my private domain, thusly interfering in our **personal conversation**." – **Shooosh –** "Quite civilized of them, actually." - **Shooosh** Said the still unmoving Darth whose mechanized breathing _Mask_ let show nothing of his emotions or inclinations.

After a moment to get further bearings on the situation, Palpatine tried to get up and realized to his nasty surprise and even greater shame that the damages from Windu rebounding his lightning at him were really worse than he thought. He could get into push-up position but not actually do the pushing up part of it. He needed help to get off the damned cold tiles before he caught himself the latest strain of Corellian Flu or worse yet, the Chandrillan pneumonia that was going around the Senate Rotunda the way Amidala used to whore herself. " _Curse the wretched she-slut's gnarled soul!_ " he mumbled.

"Don't just stand there like a great big fat sleeping Hutt, you mangy hairless Wookie clone! Get me off this floor! And where is my cane? I need it to get stable on my legs again…" Palpatine panted badly, speaking authoritatively ( _whining like a royal little bitch_ ) without realizing he was in fact revealing far more information than he should, especially about his real health status which was a precious secret.

Vader congratulated himself for laying upon the tiled floor in the foyer a thin transparent coat of a very volatile liquid **truth drug** normally used by paramedics to get a trauma victim to stabilize their mind while having them open up about the accident and their necessities without making a fuss. It is to be noted the principal recipients of this medicinal practice were usually children or the elderly as both age groups were prone to unstable attitudes and memory problems.

 **He, he, he!** Anakin was most amused behind his **Mask of Vader**. He managed to make the old crone look like an inept fool who can't walk without assistance anymore and got him stone enough to spill a few ' _not critical but still useful_ ' thingies. **WHO** exactly was it that chastised him for _being petty and cheap_ about his vengeance efforts? Ah, yes; the guy on the floor with a face full of blood and dust.

Well, not all dust. There was the Truth serum evaporation particulate. And the small dose of emetic through bare skin contact of the hands on the basted zones of the tiles. Poor _Palpy-Baby_ would have a lot of **problems keeping his food down** tonight.

"I am **Betraying** you, Oh _My Master_! Can you feel it happening to you?" silently wondered the mirthful _not-so-Sith_ as he followed his instructions dutifully as a well trained attack dog. With a great visible reluctance ( _for show_ ) Vader moved his 7 foot tall, gangly form to kneel on his right knee besides Sidious and then made a very credible effort ( _yeeeaaah riiiight!_ ) at helping the poor elderly _Grand Master Sith_ to rise again.

Unfortunately Vader's prosthetics were really misadjusted ( _the first set had been_ ) and very painful ( _still would be without the_ **Pain Managers** ) so the newly minted Darth lost his balance ( _easy enough to fake_ ) due to a massive spike of pain when he strained to lift ( _also bloody easy to fake_ ) the rather reedy lightweight _Master_ which caused two events:

 **First:** Vader due to pain ( _faked_ ) dropped Palpatine back on the ground thusly knocking the stuffing out of his elderly frame again.

 **Second:** Vader unbalanced by the pain and disorientation of moving his injured body ( _all faked_ ) tipped over and landed bodily ( _well aimed_ ), and quite violently ( _with a_ **Force Shove** _at his own back_ ), all three hundred pounds of heavy muscle, metallic limbs and Katarn armored suit on top of his poor stunned _Beloved Master_.

Palpatine, with the double effects of truth drug and emetic already inside him, only had time to register the first belch of air leaving his mouth before the second came out spewing forth a short but wide _blunderbustic_ discharge of projectile vomitus which then promptly stopped, ending in several slow filaments drooling down from his mouth.

The poor Emperor was now knocked out cold for the count, asleep face down in his own bloodied vomit, while Vader was quite appallingly lounging on his elder's fragile back, giving no signs of moving off or calling for help anytime soon.

Anakin smiled deviously inside his helmet. The first bars of the play had been played, the curtain was raised, the candles quenched and the actors in place. Now they could begin the actual acting of this charade for the _miseries_ **hemm! Hemm!...** _benefits_ of his _Most Powerfully Munificent Master_.

"Enjoy your sleep while you can, _E Chu Ta peedunki_! The next time you grace my floor with your blood you may not stay for long in such a good shape." Vader mused Darkly as he enjoyed a light respite before the continuation of the unfolding drama.

Anakin pushed a small discrete button on the chestplate of his suit to call the med-droids. He had to fake both his **physical powerlessness** and his **solicitous attitude** towards his _poor, much maligned Master_ for the whole thing to pass muster when Sidious had the video records analyzed. Of course, since the sensors were compromised at the source, in the sensors themselves, the films would show what Ani wanted seen and nothing else. Just like the _fake deaths of innocents inside the Temple_ except there would be a lot less background and ' **scenic extras** ' to integrate into the montage.

 _Bah!_ **R2D7** was good at this. He was an old hand at scamming the sensors and splicing their data streams so that Ani and Padme could have more time together without nosy knights and masters sniffing around them. Having a heavily encrypted _Private-Virtual-Network_ (PVN) between himself and his favorite **criminalized droid** in the whole Galaxy was **THE** best idea he ever had in his youth.

 _Hun!_ Maybe master Windu was right and his time among the initiates hadn't been wasted after all.

Vader's new personal medical droids ( _stolen from Sidious last week_ ) rolled in and gently maneuvered, hoisted and repositioned the ' _apparently_ ' remorseful and contrite Darth off his _poor beleaguered Master_ 's prone ( **inert** ) form. They removed Palpatine from the apartment on a hover gurney by the official front door, bringing his bruised-faced, blood and vomit maculated person to the surgery room for treatment in front of several passers-by in the corridor, thus adding many silent humiliations to his already injurious degraded state.

Anakin wasn't just petty; he was _bloody nasty mean-temperedly petty_ , and he knew it. What's more; he happened to be quite happy with himself that way. _His Master_ would know this as well when he woke up in cheap formless hospital pajamas, covered by an equally cheap dressing robe in the least flattering color Vader could find in the edifice's gift shop. He would actually tell Sidious it was a gift from him to apologize for the rude overture to their **easy relaxing evening**. Sidious would soon learn that Vader could do _subtle Sithness_ too, when it wasn't too much trouble, too much planning or too costly for a **poor Jedi slave** to afford.

Kriff you that, _Your Pruneyness_ and hope you enjoy it too!

 **Act I; Overture - A supper of fools**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Nine days after Mustafar; evening, supper**

 **Imperial medical center, Vader stateroom (** _The Crypt_ **)**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

The main doorway opened with pompous slowness ( _Vader had set its speed for this effect_ ) thusly revealing the stiffly seated form of the most powerful sovereign ruler of the Galactic Empire of Man as he moved on his powerful **High Throne of Great Authority** ( _also called a wheelchair_ ). In reality he was being pushed by a solicitous human female nurse; a fair skinned, blue eyed, busty blonde with pouty lips in her mid twenties who wore an entirely too tight set of scrubs and kept prattling blatherskites and nonsenses all the way supposedly to de-stress her patient.

Said patient didn't quite look stress-free nor happy, despite the clean fresh set of hospital-issued milky white pajamas and brown furry bantha-face slippers ( _joke footwear for children_ ) covered by the cheap, too short, luridly eye-searing fluorescent pink bathrobe. The color looked like someone took the iconic Sith lightsaber blade's Molten Ruby Red then diluted cream and oatmeal in it. Given the robe was a rather clumpy terrycloth of the cheapest kind, even being thick didn't make it look any more appealing and closeness wasn't improving things. It was in fact uglier from close-up as it was now obvious the garment had been designed for someone both shorter and slimmer than Palpatine, and also much more female than him, as indicated by the frilly white lacework at the collar and hems. The minuscule ¼ inch wide yellow smiley faces spread randomly around the robe also showed it had been intended for a much younger clientele too.

 **Vader was most amused at the indignities he had managed to heap unto his prideful Master.**

Palpatine didn't have any sort of cowl or head covering so his old, pasty beige complexion, all ' **pruneyly** ' ( _Anakin congratulated himself for the neologism he created_ ) wrinkled and creased with his small beady yellow eyes were exposed for everybody to stare, gawk and point at with total impunity. The fact he was now utterly bald and no longer had eyebrows either was visually disconcerting, too.

The whole thing made him look like an emaciated sickly invalid grand-daddy ( _or featherless vulture_ ) whose grand-daughter had lent him her robe for the emergency ambulance trip to the med-center until they could situate him properly. Vader was most gleefully thinking about the many holocams he had around the suite that were recording this moment of _personal humiliation_ for the **posterity of Imperial Archives**. An anonymous donation would be made in the near future along with a check to insure the Archives kept on doing their _fabulously educational task_ of informing the Peoples of the Empire about the _Majesty, Highness and Exaltation of their August Emperor_ , even when he was laid low by ill-health.

" **Mwu ah ah ah!** There's **Betrayal** for you, _My Master_! Is this Sith enough for you?"Anakin gleefully thought while _Force Shielding_ his emotions at his best ability **.**

 **Darth Sidious was not best pleased by his predicament.**

" _Oh Darth Bane; could your Holy Ghost pleeeaaase kill her off or at least make her mute? Your spiritual descendant would greatly appreciate it!_ " Sidious entreated silently inside his mind while showing a bland grandfatherly face and inane polite smiles. Unfortunately, his **con-job on the Universe** demanded that he keep in his _kind parental figuration_ when in public sight. He really wanted to string the blond bimbo up the ceiling chandelier by her entrails then flail her with a whip crafted of her own hair with her teeth braided in it for bloodier effect when he saw the face ( **Mask** ) of his erstwhile apprentice, seated in his own **demi-throne** in the conversation area, almost casually enough to hide his body's pains.

Sidious pursed his lips and frowned most mightily as he remembered waking up in the surgery room, his face swathed in Bacta patches and a sharp pain emanating from his nose and swollen sinuses. He also had an inexplicable kink in his back and his stomach felt raw and upset. A quick review of the sensor scans assisted by one of his Red Elite had showed him the deplorable **comedy of errors** that happened as he entered Vader's abode.

 **He slipped on the '** _Welcome_ **' letter drawings on the rug.**

Just like a bloody drunken collegian after celebrations to feast the end of year exams. Or more truly, like a toddler in diapers who was learning to walk without help. He had faceplanted most ingloriously then been so disoriented that he made several grossly untactical revelations to Vader's merciless helmet sensors. After that, his lack of usable wits was shown clearly when he told the oversized **man-child** invalid to bend down to help pick him up off the floor.

 **Karabast! What a clusterfuck that was!**

Sidious was mentally flagellating himself for five kinds of fools as he reminded himself forcefully that he had ordered Vader's physical capacities to be limited just as much as the Force abilities. The prosthetics were very well designed to imitate _'bad design_ ' and further ' _bad craftsmanship_ ' to explain away the painful misery Vader would experience for a few months before Palpatine showed again his **parental kindness** by ' _allowing_ ' Anakin to get new surgeries and a new set of limbs that wouldn't hurt anymore.

The **boy** was so _mentally limited_ that he probably wouldn't think of getting the surgeries revised or the limbs adjusted unless _His Master_ made the decisions for him. If there was **ONE THING** that the Jedi Temple's culture had been good at, it was stamping individuality and mental autonomy out of the followers. That was all well and good, until the local Sith Lord needed an apprentice and had to teach the **boy** everything from breathing up to using the bloody toilet cleanly.

" _I should have gotten a dog for real; it would have been less trouble…_ " Sidious mused nastily

Instead, it was Sidious himself who had almost become invalid for life when the great oaf had toppled onto his frail prostrate self, almost at the speed and strength of a damn shuttle coming down from orbit, right into the damn hard Vjun marble tiles. The vomit exploding from his person had been _such a horrifyingly humiliating vision_ the he had experienced a sympatic reaction making him puke his guts out anew, right as the blasted doctor walked into the surgery room to witness it. The Red Elite was even less fortunate, as he was close enough to receive the vomitus in lieu of the missing emetic basin.

 **Eeewww!**

 **! E'e Inecta ! Was there no ends to his shame?**

Darth Sidious prayed fervently to all the **Naboo Spirits** and **Force Ghosts** of the dead Sith Lords of the past aeons that the rest of the evening pass with more decorum and less acrobatics. He wasn't a _child's action figurine_ to be doing flips and rolls and tumbles like that at his venerable age! Vader had better put on some _damned fine contrition_ and show clearly he understood **WHO** was **MASTER** in this _relation_ or he'd get ' _enlightened_ ' about his new reality right fast, he would!

The nurse which Vader had selected specifically because she was, shall we say ' **pleasantly companiable** '? ( _yeeeaaah, riiight!_ ) Rolled the wheelchair all the way to Palpatine's small throne in the conversation area and then insisted on helping the _frail sick old man_ in his transfer from conveyance to static chair.

She was so blasted ' _sweet_ ' and ' _wholesome_ ' that even Ani was feeling queasy after not even three minutes of her presence inside his suite. He would be sticking to bland liquid Vitapaste the rest of the evening after that visit; no sweet tea or hot chocolate for a while otherwise he'd need an insulin injection on top of all the other medicines he took. This meant of course that _His Master_ 's suffering would be even greater, since his affected public façade was one of benevolence. The **Mask of Vader** had no such constrictions as boorishness was supposed be his trademark anyways…

 **One does not ask the** _Attack Dog_ **to do polite soiree conversation, after all…**

Once Palpatine was situated on his wide solid throne and the nurse had cheerfully left, waving and chattering to empty air along the way, Anakin began **Phase II** of his **petty vengeance** against his _Most Beloved Master_. Let him suffer, the kretthing sleemo Tusken's dropping!

Vader made a great production of painfully ( _faked_ ) standing up to full height, taking the four short paces to the appropriate position at an angle from the throne due to the couches and coffee tables so he could kneel and perform the ' **obeisance's** ' expected from a Darth towards _His Master_. Except Vader had some problems with the actual kneeling part; he lowered down about 2/3 of the the way then his right leg seemed to emit an unnatural shrieking noise ( _mini sound chip_ ) as the mechanism gave up the ghost and the hydraulics failed miserably ( _in the manner prepared_ ).

In a well timed, precisely aimed and impeccably **choreographed** _display of what an accident looks like_ , Vader collapsed to the floor until he had his left knee on the floor and both closed fists spread out to support his massive weight while the right leg had spread out and away backwards at a weird angle that supported and helped nothing at all. Unfortunately for Palpatine, he was now _far more aware of the limitations_ of Vader's great Katarn Armor helmet as it had resoundingly impacted his left knee in yet another shocking scene of how even an Emperor wasn't immune from the Universe's vagaries.

 **Kriffing Karabast! That bloody fucking HURTS!**

Sidious was now clutching feebly at his damaged knee with both wrinkled hands, swearing most fluently in Huttese in a display of classless crass that he would never under normal circumstances allow anybody to witness and live. He had standards to maintain, dammit all, and this wasn't helping!

The nurse was chatting happily, mostly to herself to be honest, as she was packing up her field kit after spending a good half hour setting up layers of Bacta patches, protective ' _comfort_ ' padding and an adjustable segmented thermoplastic brace on Palpatine's left knee joint. The old man had needed to grit his teeth in silent sufferance of the bimbo's existence as she was the one dispensing his medical care again, much to his great anger and jealousy as he glared at Vader's silent caregiver.

Back to sitting on his demi-throne, Vader now had his right leg elongated on a stool while a matte blue with silver piping astromech droid ( **R2D7** ) of rather bulky proportions was tending the repairs inside the malfunctioning ( **Snort!** ) cybernetic limb. The boot, leg, knee joint and thigh plates of the Katarn armor had been disassembled and set aside on the floor besides Vader who sat in blithe immobile silence as if he were sleeping inside his life-support suit without a care for the world.

In actuality Anakin was using his self-made custom built, high-quality **immersive** _holo-system_ that now served as his **full-color** _multi-mode_ display inside his helmet to privately watch the evening news. Palpatine's visit to the med-center had been leaked ( _we wonder how?_ ) and the media were asking many uneasy questions ( _for Palpy-Baby_ ) especially in the light of a certain film of his _August Majesty_ being pushed around unconscious on a gurney, covered in bloody vomit, had made its way to some of the seedier holonet tabloid sites. This was now being shown by the more stable, more reputable Galactic channels following confirmation by ' **selected** ' personnel ( _droids imitating humanoid voices_ ) inside the hospital.

The **artificially cheery** blond bimbo nurse left the Vader stateroom for the second time that evening, making _scary promises_ that she was just a few doors away should _the need arise_. Both men shivered in dread but for very different reasons. Anakin had **chosen the woman** for a reason after all, and he knew things that Palpatine would find out soon enough at his own expense. Sidious was just glad to be rid of the bloody motor-mouth bitch than never shuts up. All his attempts at _mind tricks_ , _Dark-Side energy projection_ and _Fear Strikes_ had all gone unheeded. It was as if the girl was completely separated from the flows of the Force.

Darth Sidious glared evilly at his apprentice and wondered long and hard **WHY** he should teach him anything about the Dark Side of the Force when he was such a bloody threat to everybody just by his inept, high-speed, high-impact existence. "Stupid children… Never wanted any… Why now?" Sidious mumbled to himself, unaware that Anakin had greatly modified and boosted the entire kit of sensors on the entire life-support suit, not just the helmet. He got the sound just fine and everything was filmed in glorious holo-cam for later use, too.

Sidious squinted his beady piss-yellow eyes at the droid that was now closing the access ports on Vader's leg. It then used what looked like metallic ribbed tentacles with 5-fingered hands at the ends to take the armor pieces and reassembled the leg armor of the suit without any prompting or even a single sign from Vader of knowing what was happening.

 **Time for another part of the play to be enacted.**

"Lord Vader!" Sidious griped out loud in his screeching reedy voice. The elderly statesman coughed and cleared his throat a few times, covering his mouth with a closed fist. The left hand clutched the crystal pommel of his cane tightly, almost fearfully, as if his safety depended on it. Damn! He had forgotten that his rebounded Sith lightning had damaged his vocal chords a bit; making long speeches was possible but only if he didn't try to scream or raise his voice above dinner table level.

Taking a deep breath, Sidious was about to call out to his subordinate or rap his cane against the coffee table to make some noise when the great black hulking form slouched in the demi-throne startled and grunted, the mechanically regulated respirator's constant noise never variating despite the now wakeful state of its user. Vader shook his head sleepily (fake) and made a show of seeming put out by something he had experienced in his dreams not being present.

 **Shooosh** \- "Well, _My Master_ …" - **Shooosh** Anakin began while affecting a tone of submissiveness he had often used amongst the Jedi cultists in his younger years, **Shooosh -** "Perhaps in light of recent events we could simply dispense with _physical displays of respect and affection_ for the time being." – **Shooosh –** "At least until all my limbs are adjusted and my organic sense of balance is recovered fully." – **Shooosh.**

"Is that why you thought it prudent to fall asleep in there thus leaving me alone and unprotected with that **thing** for so long?" Sidious's venomous voice lanced out.

Bypassing the question, Ani went in for the kill instead: **Shooosh** \- "I dreamed of Padme… She was here, _My Master_." – **Shooosh –** "S **he held our child in her arms** and we were all whole and healthy… _Why?_ **Whyyyy!** " – **Shooosh –** " **SOBS!** " Vader exploded in depressive, despondent sobbing that sounded quite eerie coming from inside the great helmet while also being rendered phonically by the vocalizer array in the mouthpiece.

Darth Sidious watched in utter powerlessness as his **Magnum Opus** , his _Jedi Destroyer_ , his Apprentice, the second most exalted being in the Empire and official Heir of the Throne collapsed in his chair limblessly as he cried, sobbed and bawled out like an infant in an out-of-control tantrum.

 **It was all fake; off course.**

Anakin was having a grand old time at playing this out to the max, telling himself that this was just the Universe's way of inflicting justice on Palpatine. The lecherous old crud had wanted his apprentice to be broken of body and soul, his mind shattered by grief, depression, manic mood swings and chronic pain. Well, he was gonna get what he wanted. Ani had searched the holonet for the psychological profiles and anecdotes about the lives and treatments of people that fit the diverse conditions and ailments he suffered from then manufactured a ' **character sheet** ' to play by, just like an actor in a holomovie. _Palpy-Baby_ was going to see first hand that living with someone who had long term injuries and chronic mental illness wasn't a picnic.

Master Nantosta Kaab's holocron was quite happy to help cobble up the whole scenario and thought it incredibly funny that an entire Empire could be based on a double-lie.

If it happened to scare the _Pruney Bastard_ into sending Vader away to only call in the worst urgencies, then so much the better for Ani. It would mean more loose length in the leash, more freedom, more time to himself and far less oversight as even the spies Palpatine would use would be expected to be discovered and executed cruelly from time to time. Anakin had been a Jedi General in the Clone Wars and survived by the strength of his military and counter-espionage skills, something both Jedi and Sidious recognized as top-notch. Therefore, killing off the snoopers periodically was easy to explain and would insure his reputation of cruelty so the regular troops and bureaucrats would keep away from him until Vader called for their services.

Yes, things were falling into place remarkably well for the young **fake-Sith**.

It took almost a half hour for Vader to calm down from his **fit** of ' _emoting_ ' about his dead wife and child to make a trip to his HBC to get refreshed a bit and make himself ' _presentable_ ' for polite company.

For once, Darth Sidious had nothing glib, nasty or demeaning to add; the wrinkled old has-been was just happy to be left alone on his throne to savor his loneliness and the silence of the room. Even the huge durasteel HyperBaric Chamber's mechanisms were completely silent when the thing was closed as Sidious had designed it with everything inside. It was useful to protect his apprentice from outside attempts at sabotage and murder as the HBC could then serve as a panic room of sorts. It also made sure than Vader had plenty of shiny moving _thingies to play with_ if he had trouble sleeping or meditating, instead of running around the Universe creating political troubles and diplomatic incidents that Palpatine hadn't specifically asked for.

 **You can't have a dog and not build a doghouse…**

Although, given the boy's temper and raw power, Sidious was beginning to feel he had accidentally bought himself a larval space-slug rather than a puppy. There certainly wasn't the grace, obedience and loyalty of a dog in this one! But the ill-mannered, explosive tempered, physically uncontrolled nature of the young man certainly reminded of those massive, ungainly and untamable space creatures that inhabit asteroids. **Snort!** For someone who hated the Hutt's race and culture the way he did, Vader was certainly showing that he had been raised in the environment of their crass uncouth bestiality! He acted with the finesse and courtly disposition of a Hutt's tail-end most of the time!

Sidious snarled angrily, smacking the leg of his throne with his wooden cane. He should have remembered what his father had told him about breeding animals in his youth. As was the way of things for Nubian people of noble standing back then, the House of Palpatine had owned a country-side villa with a small stable for a few horses and a pair of guard dogs. His father had explained that no matter how loving and caring you were, a dog would always fall back on two things; **1)** its biological instincts built into its DNA and **2)** the behaviors trained by the person who bred and birthed it. If a dog was shown kindness from birth it would always be kind but if it had been starved, beaten and taught to attack for its food, then the animal would always revert to this when stressed or left alone too long without human guidance based solely on kindness.

Damn but Skywalker fit the pattern so much! First a slave to the Hutts, then the Toydarian, then the Jedi and now here. Sidious palmed his wrinkled face in despair as he finally realized what he had been dreading but trying most forcibly to ignore. Vader was **broken**. And the worse part, it wasn't even HIM that did the breaking! The damn fool of a boy did it to himself and, of course, did it all wrong! Now Sidious would have to start by _fixing the damages_ before he could even try to train him lest he wound up having to deal with a rabid maniac less stable than the bloody Maw of Kessel!

 **! E'e Inecta ! Why again, did he think killing off Darth Plagueis had been a good idea?**

The motorized whine of the HBC hydraulics elevating the top portion of the egg-shaped thing dragged _His Majesty_ from his Dark musings ( _bitchy whining_ ) to behold the massive, awe inspiring form of Vader as he strode forth powerfully from the chamber's inner sanctum.

( _Charlie Chaplin; The kid – His morning promenade_ )

And promptly helmet-planted into the floor barely three feet away from the back of Palpatine's throne.

The shock and reverberations through the floor were such that Sidious felt it even through the thick plush upholstery of the chair ( _hidden micrograv motors_ ). Trying to turn around in his throne to see over the tall backrest, Sidious almost gave himself a heart attack when he came nose-to- **Mask** with Vader as the man had managed an incredibly fast ( _Force-assisted_ ) recovery from his ( _controlled belly flop_ ) resounding fall. It was an incredibly tense moment for Sidious as Vader was now so close that the Emperor could actually feel the air movements around the Mask's mouthpiece where the exhaust was located. With less than an inch between weak elderly flesh and Katarn-armored cybernetic might, Palpatine suddenly felt far less Imperial and much more like a Sith Grand Master about to be **Betrayed** for his position and power.

Left hand surreptitiously twisting his cane in a looser position to use it defensibly in a crunch, Sidious held the subconscious glaring contest against the inhuman insect-like lenses of **Vader's Mask**. A Sith Lord never backs down, even if the challenge was given by accident. It may show weakness and let the Apprentice think there was an opening when there wasn't any to be had. Given how many hits to the head Anakin had received recently, plus the fires of Mustafar and all the drugs, who knew what exactly was happening inside his head? At this point, Sidious was willing to concede that Ani wasn't truly cognizant of his own state anymore and Palpatine himself knew even less.

 **Kreth! What a mess!**

Wasn't finding and initiating an apprentice supposed to be simple? His own _Turning to Darkness_ certainly hadn't been the ungainly, disorganized chaos riddled by adolescent angst that Vader had become. Not to mention the _kriffing d'loop'zrich_ was 23 years old! Shouldn't he be passed ' _adolescent_ ' anything at this point of his life? Again, Sidious's mind wandered back to WHY he thought getting anything other than a regular dog had been a good idea as he began to slightly drool from his mouth…

 **Which was all good for Anakin.**

It meant that Sidious had no idea that his ' _favorite nurse_ ' had applied **poisoned Bacta** to his knee and it was the psychoactive drugs taking effect on his mind's ability to think in linear streams. This allowed the **weak-willed** , **un-subtle** , **planless** _man-child_ to use some of the Darkest, most subtle _Mind Tricks_ he had been able to learn by the good services of master Nantosta Kaab's holocron in his youth.

She had needed some particularly strong _Force Persuasion_ skills to deal with angry, paranoid Jedi who came back with heavy PTSD cases from fighting Darklings and mundane criminals of all sorts in the Outer Rim and Beyond Borders. She quite gleefully taught Ani those Force abilities along lots of psychology, psychiatry and pharmacology. Seeing clearly his loneliness and his need for emotional attachments that was being denied or even assaulted by the Jedi elders, she had specifically insisted in teaching him many social and verbal techniques used by therapists to diffuse turmoil, doubts, jealousy and anger. These therapeutic methods worked wonders on his own wounded soul when he felt aggressive or isolated and forgotten by the world. They had helped him diffuse a lot of interpersonal troubles at the Temple of Jedi back when he was padawan and his marriage with Padme had been much smoother since he could spot and manipulate ' _conflict cells_ ' before they turned to damaging emotional storms.

 **Him!** _Anakin Skywalker the_ **peace-maker** _inside his home!_

Darth Sidious would think the Universe crazed out of its alignment if he knew this!

Using all these hard-earned medical skills and Force abilities against _His Dear Beloved Master_ was just _sooo_ much fun! The snobbish fool thought because Anakin was born poor in slavery that he had no education, no personality and no means to better himself in any ways. Well, _His Exalted Majesty_ was gonna get the facts of life explained at length. **Maybe.** It was _sooo_ amusing to watch him drool as he tried to order his thoughts to bark commands at his attack dog.

And who was the animal here, if Vader wasn't the one barking aloud?

 **Eh eh eh!** Yes, Vader could do _subtle Sith insults_ too, even if he was the only one aware of it.

It was actually the Jedi masters who showed him how silent contempt and subtle insults worked _in real life_ with their thinly veiled despise towards the entirety of the _Mundane Universe_ at large. That and their jabs at his youth, attachments and emotional states. The more he thought about it, the less differences between the two cults Anakin found. **THAT** confirmed he was on the right **Path** with his many plans.

A short half-hour later saw the _Great Mighty Emperor of Man_ sitting at the dining table in that area's smaller pivoting demi-throne. Before him was a spread of exotic foods fit for his exalted station, not just the specialties of the Outer-Rim backwater that gave him birth. Despite its natural riches, culture and high society, Naboo was still too much of a long distance, far removed planet to be worthy of acknowledgment as the homeworld of the _Imperatis Personae_.

No, right now it wasn't the food selection that bothered Sheev Palpatine that much. It was the small matter that **he didn't remember the last 30 minutes of his life** and was clueless as to how he wound up sitting at this table…

It was his proper place and the utensils were the ' _gift_ ' set crafted of the same black Katarn material as his life-support suit that he had offered to Vader, both as another subtle insult and as a badge of his servitude. After all, despite their somber beauty and elegant crests of Vader and Sith Empire on them, they were useless to their owner other than to remind him painfully of his decheance from manhood to puppet every time he received guests at his table.

Palpatine glared at the black monolith of Katarn and false leather at the other end of the table, technically the ' _head_ ' of it as Vader was the nominal owner of the stateroom despite the Emperor's demi-throne being bigger and more decorated. Another subtle insult to the _man-child_ inside his own home and place of recovery. **NEVER** let the subordinate feel anything other than inferiority and subordination when faced with _His Master_ ; such was the basis of psychological domination. A fine and satisfying art form, to be sure, despite the laborious nature of the craft.

 **Still, how the kreth had he found himself sitting here for dinner without knowing?**

Sidious turned his waning attention to the plates and utensils on the table before him, seeing clearly the bite marks and knife cuts in the food morsels that indicated he had been at this for a moment already. Since a quick _Force Perception_ onto his own body showed him he had indeed been eating for a while, it was the inescapable conclusion that his mind had ' _slipped_ ' from his grasp at some point. This state of things was unacceptable and demanded redress at the earliest moment he could ditch Vader to consult a private, loyal beyond doubt, physician of his acquaintance in the Under-City.

 **Shooosh –** " _My Master_ , are you well?" - **Shooosh** \- "You seem distracted of late." - **Shooosh** \- "In fact, you remind me of Padme around the time of the year that the Republic Budget is discussed in the senate." - **Shooosh** \- "Certainly nothing so horrible as to warrant a _Plague of Bureaucrats_ unto **House Vader** has occurred?" - **Shooosh.**

The Emperor's warning hateful glare confirmed what Anakin knew already.

 _Dear_ Palpatine was quite well distracted of course. Between the knocks on the head, the various _Green Jedi drugs_ sloshing through his veins, the dozen medical-caliber _Mental Compulsions_ and the thorough _Mind Rape_ that Vader had put him through just moments ago, yes Anakin was professionally and certifiably certain that _His Old Friend_ was most truly ' **distracted** ' and not fully in the ' **Here & Now**'.

All was in the Order of Things. **Mwu ah ah ah!**

 **Act II; Main act - Dramatis Theatricum**

 _(Albert Ketelbey – In a Persian Market witch choir)_

 **Nine days after Mustafar; evening, after supper**

 **Imperial medical center, VIP physiotherapy gymnasium**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Darth Vader, soon to be **most dreaded of all the Dark Lords of the Sith** in the history of Sithdom shuffled laboriously ( _faked mobility troubles_ ) into the gymnastics room and waited at the front of the mats as if he were a great old master waiting for his students to array themselves around his tatami.

Barely thirty seconds later two full patrols of white armored stormtroopers entered and positioned at regular intervals around two sides of the mats. The soldiers arrayed themselves in rows six long by two deep, standing at parade attention with their E-11 blaster assault rifles presented at the shoulder.

Barely a minute later, the Emperor arrived, once again on his legs though he walked slowly with considerable deliberation and favored his left leg a lot. The six Elite Red Guards were again behind him and entered the gymnasium along their Master. The Emperor placed himself at the empty side of the mats, with the entry door at his back, having three Reds on each side, one full step before and aside from his own position. The W _rinkled Old Crud_ , once again draped in his deeply cowled robes of office, stared across the practice mats at his newly named Apprentice from under the low brim of his hood. His urine-yellow eyes glowed malevolently, broadcasting his discontent for the younger Sith to see and feel in the Force.

Anakin smiled widely inside the **Mask of Vader**. _His Master_ had taken the bait, the poison and the hook altogether without so much as a twitch. Time to reel in the catch to make himself a fish-stick on the campfire flame, just like in the days of the Clone Wars in the uninhabited worlds.

 **Shooosh** \- "I thank you most humbly, _My Master_ , for agreeing to assist me in diagnosticating the problems with my body and new prosthetics." - **Shooosh** – "This simple basic ( _Mwu ah ah ah!_ ) combat exercise ( _practice in assaulting His Master_ ) should suffice for now." – **Shooosh.**

The twenty four stormtroopers were now a bit less anxious, as a simple sparring with an officer to evaluate his capacities after injuries was pretty standard. Nobody could get blamed for anything and the man's health hadn't been damaged by them so they were in the clear.

 **So they thought.**

"Very well, Lord Vader, you may proceed. Perhaps this small demonstration will compensate for the otherwise boringly bland evening ( _lying through his teeth…_ ) I had to endure."

( _Carl Orff – O Fortuna; Carmina Burana_ )

Darth Vader shuffled painfully to the center of the mats and signaled the troopers to begin assaulting him two at a time. He was bare handed, not a weapon in sight.

The first pair or soldiers charged and tried to clobber the massive black-cloaked figure with the stocks of their blaster carbines. The ' _man_ ' was sick and invalid, rifle butts should be sufficient at this time to evaluate his status.

They were wrong.

 **They were Oh So Wrong!**

 **Shooosh**

Anakin had specifically assembled this group of soldiers out of a very rare and limited subset of soldiers that he knew he could fight without any holding back. He had asked **R2D7** to compile a list of the soldiers in all the disciplinary barracks within two days of travel of Coruscant. From those worthless souls he selected and ordered transported back to Empire Central all those convicted or credibly accused of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping or _Treason against the Galactic Republic_ during the Clone Wars.

 **Shooosh**

 **None of them were supposed to survive the day. He would not permit it.**

 **Shooosh**

Vader lashed out a closed fist on the left hard enough to smash through the armored chest of the soldier, folding in his chestplate to crush his thorax, exploding his solar plexus and shattering all the ribs in one fell strike that punted the soldier into the air all the way back to the wall where he smacked, then collapsing to the floor quite truly dead.

 **Shooosh**

With his right hand he grabbed the other trooper's throat, giving a single violent jerk that twisted the man's neck so hard his head drooped loosely in death. Vader carelessly threw the corpse rightwards through the assembly of soldiers hard enough to send the cadaver smacking into the wall where it collapsed to the floor in a disorderly heap.

 **Shooosh** \- " **Mwu ah ah ah!** " - **Shooosh** \- Vader exulted, letting loose his _Force Presence_ out of his control to flood the room with Dark-Side energy, cooling the temperature by several degrees and striking fear into the souls of the troopers. **Shooosh** – "You will NEVER leave this room alive! Murderers! Rapists! TRAITORS!" - **Shooosh** \- "You will all die by my hand today!" - **Shooosh** \- "You do not even deserve the use of my blade!" – **Shooosh.**

 **Shooosh**

The sound of the mechanical respirator seemed to amplify, filling the room's air with a sound so terrible that in coming years this simple two-toned noise would suffice to strike fear and terror in the minds of those who heard it. Even to those who did not know his name or his face, Darth Vader's iconic breathing apparatus would be described and people of all ages would be told " _If you hear this sound, run and never look back! Run as far and as long as you can; for when he catches you, only pain and depravity will be your end._ "

 **Shooosh**

Those mismatched, ill-trained human or clone troopers who had lived out the Clone Wars in judicial custody had no chance against the war-weary hardened veteran they faced. The fact each of them had committed great crimes and deserved far slower and crueler deaths meant that the monster dressed in black Katarn armor, flaring the great armor-weave cloak would have no mercy for them.

 **Shooosh**

( _Richard Wagner – Ride of the Walkyries_ )

All at once the troopers understood the reason they had been pulled out of prison, put on fast transports back to the Capital and been given armor, weapons and even combat stimulants to boost their performances. It was all because of this. Because they had no chance to survive. This wasn't a parade detail or even a test spar; it was a mass execution at the hands of a madman. They exchanged a few looks and a few glances at the two dead then rushed altogether all at once, hoping to overcome the monster in their midst by sheer numbers.

 **They were wrong.**

 **Shooosh**

Darth Vader exploded in movements so harsh and powerful that white armored bodies kept flying away from him all the way to the walls where they crashed with mind-jarring noises or else they impacted into their comrades thus clearing a short-lived space around the raging Dark Lord of the Sith.

 **Shooosh**

All through the fighting, the noise from Vader's respirator kept up its steady infallible two-toned rhythm, whether he be twisting necks, breaking limbs or crushing spines, the machinery that made him breathe never faltered in fueling the almighty predator through his dreaded _Low Works of Justice_. Men screamed, jeered, cried and begged, pissing themselves in fright when the unfeeling insectoid face of his **Mask** turned towards them or loosened their bowels in death as they lay on the floor, obstacles to the movements and survival of their remaining comrades.

 **Shooosh**

But NEVER did the unholy mechanical sound of Vader's inhuman existence stop or falter or change pace, just like his advance through the press of enemies who knew their end was nigh. Vader actually increased their fear by synchronizing his attacks to the tune of the respirator's sounds, pausing in the harsh exhale then surging in the silent inhale. This oddly timed, strangely decided method of fighting threw off kilter the last resistance of the massed troopers who began to fall faster and harder before the monstrous onslaught of Vader's armored fists and feet.

 **Shooosh**

It took almost ten minutes for the entire group of twenty four felonious troopers to be manually decimated. Never during the entire fight did Vader draw a weapon.

 **Shooosh**

As Darth Vader dropped to the floor at his feet the last cadaver whose throat he had squeezed so hard it had pulped in his grasp, sluicing blood though his fingers, Emperor Palpatine sensed through the Force a _Prescient Instinct_ that told him to beware of **Betrayal** coming to fruition. As Vader's great black form turned slowly towards _His Master_ and shuffled towards the Emperor, a trooper who had been playing dead on the floor near the wall adjusted his blaster rifle and took a shot at Vader's back, weapon set to its highest killing strength. Normally, this would go through the hull of a shuttle.

 **Shooosh**

Vader heard the power-up of the weapon and pivoted rapidly, his uncertain cybernetic legs giving a bit on the side, by chance or accident taking him out of the direct line of fire for the hit to punch through his great armor-weave cloak rather than his back. The Sith Lord flared the length of black garment defensively while reaching out with the Force to grab the soldier and _Force Choke_ him, simultaneously raising him in the air to gesticulate desperately like a rag doll in storm winds.

 **Shooosh**

The flailing trooper discharged his weapon randomly towards Vader who moved the man a bit on the side without it being apparent he had done so. This put the trooper's blaster in direct line with the immobile and vulnerable Emperor of Man. Palpatine's face as the first salvo of blaster bolts came at him was a thing of rare beauty, especially given how he now looked.

 **Shooosh**

Using the Force himself, Darth Sidious had no choice but to sacrifice one of his precious Elite Red Guards by _lifting_ the man into the path of the shots to absorb them while he tried to shuffle backwards and out of the firing lane. His gimped left leg wasn't cooperating and he needed his cane to focus the Force through the crystal pommel to establish a defensive _Force Shield_ to deflect further beam attacks. With his mobility and maneuverability so badly hampered, the Galactic Emperor just knew something would go wrong.

 **Shooosh**

Unfortunately, as Vader finished choking the life out of him, the criminal trooper shot again, this time into the Red at the Emperor's left side. The man fell sideways spun about by the strength of the bolt, right into the retreating body of the frail elderly monarch who never had the time to see it coming nor react to dodge, if he even could. Neither was aware of the harsh _Force Push_ that Vader inflicted into the back of the tumbling man, imparting him the impact velocity of a small speeder at arrival.

 **Shooosh**

With an almost divine indolence, Vader cast aside the _broken plaything_ as he turned to _His Master_ in panic ( _truly well faked as he was rather gleeful_ ) as he heard the scream of outraged pain coming from the elderly male Sith. Sidious was buried under a pile of red armored flesh with both legs bent at unnatural angles that normal humanoid biology did not make allowances for. As Vader began to walk / shuffle painfully ( _faked_ ) towards his Lord, he emitted a discrete _Force Pulse_ that activated the two fallen Elite Red's Force Pikes to make them light up at full strength at the same time.

 **Shooosh**

Darth Sidious didn't even have time to realize what was happening, much less scream in protest or use the Force to stop it. Both Force Pikes were close enough and strangely ( _yeah, riiight!_ ) placed so that the tip of one touched the butt of the other which was lined up right to Palpatine's left foot, barely two inches away from his shoe.

 **Shooosh**

 **ZZZAAAPPP! AAAaaarrrggghhh! And so falls the Emperor of Man.**

 **Shooosh**

An incredibly loud alarm began to wail through the corridors and rooms of the med-center as the central system received the automated call from Sidious's surveillance comm-link that said the Emperor had fallen to illness or injury yet again. An armored rush of troopers and officers arrived inside of three minutes to ascertain the situation and secure the person of the Emperor from harm.

They were quite late as it was since they were forced to use the stairs. Anakin's droid allies had parked the elevators at the bottom of the shafts in maintenance mode for the night.

 _My, what a mis-timed decision that was… Mwu ah ah ah!_

 **Shooosh**

Sheev Palpatine had suffered a nasty nerve burn from the tip of his foot all the way to his heart as the incredibly debilitating energy arc of the linked pikes circulated through his _Force-Strengthened_ nervous system. He was presently comatose due to neuronal overload and cardiac arrhythmia. Although he COULD have stayed conscious, the ignition, burn and explosion of the Bacta patches on his left knee joint was somewhat traumatic on a different level than simple electrocution. Since this meant that Palpatine had felt the liquid fire of the burning Bacta envelop his knee followed by its detonation, followed by the thermoplastic brace liquefying then run down around his damaged limb like molten lava… Yes Palpy-Baby had justifiable reasons to be insensate.

 **Shooosh**

That just wouldn't do. He needed to be awake and aware to suffer as Anakin had suffered on Mustafar and afterwards in the med-center's butchering block. Something needed done about this…

 **Shooosh – Shooosh.**

Quite a pity it was too, that he wasn't awake to _Force Perceive_ the Dark gleefulness of his Apprentice at the gloriously violent bloodshed spread all around the room. On the other hand, Anakin mused that the coma would keep Sidious from realizing that Ani had used his _Telekinesis_ to move a few bodies and items during the fighting to arrive at this painful conclusion for the old man. The young _fake-Sith_ had barely the time to exert one last medical-grade _Forcible Purge_ against Sidious's abdomen to cause him to vomit explosively while also voiding bladder and bowels at the same time before help arrived.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh.**

Just as the mean-spirited forcible discharge of _His Pruneyness's_ inner plumbing happened, the liquid fires of the Bacta and plastic brace finished reaching the critical temperature needed to ignite the flimsy flannel hospital pajamas, the dingy bathrobe and the massive, thick felt robes of office all at once.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh.**

Sheev Palpatine's inert form lit up like an _Empire Day firewheel_ display. Every last inch of his body was **burned to the second degree** in mere seconds, which increased the horrifying visual ambiance for the four remaining Elite Red who were even now trying to put out the flames by using their own long and wide armor-weave cloaks. The sights were inhumane but the smell of braised human flesh and boiled humanoid body wastes ratcheted the gore factor so high that even the most hardened veterans from the Clone Wars would have been given pause upon entering the gymnasium.

This postulate was proven quite handily by the fact that the first officers to arrive didn't have helmets on their heads and backed away into the corridor against the press of armored troopers, vomiting all over their men's bodies and equipments along the way out of the gymnasium's hellish miasma.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh.**

" **BURN!** Do you hear this? **BURN** _Sidious_ , like you made **ME** burn at Mustafar!" Anakin exulted silently inside his mind as he willingly gave himself to a rushing feel of true unabated **Dark-Side** energy to push the worst malevolence and ill-wishes he could produce unto his _Much Beloved Master_.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh.**

Even a _T-Series Tactical droid_ would have choked on this airborne pea-soup for a reason.

 **Snort!**

And the bronze-plated buggers didn't have any kind of breathing systems nor even vents on them.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh.**

Now that he had calmed down after a few critical seconds of unrivaled vengefulness, Anakin reordered his thoughts to confirm that all he had left to do was obtain the films of the yet again unconscious Emperor being wheeled back to surgery.

 _His Majesty_ 's wrecked body covered in cremation soot, blood, puke, piss and shit would feed the tabloids a ' _juicy_ ' story they could never resist printing. Thusly, another large permanent gash in **Palpatine's** _public_ **Imperatis Personae** would be done, right along the grave corporeal damages to his physical frame.

 **Character assassination was a valid method of murder amongst the Sith ways.**

 **Shooosh –** "I have **Betrayed** you, _Oh My Master_! Can you feel it from the depths of your slumber?" - **Shooosh –** "Even as you watched right at me, even as the Force _blessed you_ with a warning of my treachery, the most base act was carried out unseen and unpunished." - **Shooosh –** "You will fail, _My Master_! You will **Fall**! And I will be the cause of this **Fall**! _Such are the ways of the Sith!_ " – **Shooosh.**

Even as the rescue medics worked feverishly through the Tarterian climate to reanimate the soiled man, Vader's mechanically driven breath sounded counterpoint. The inhuman noisome exhale seemed to happen only when the paramedics administering CPR compressed the fallen man's chest noisily but stayed silent with its inhale just as they relaxed the pressure also silently. The combined noise-pauses seemed to deepen the lack of sound and make that particular silence a damning denunciation of their efforts for the grievously affected monarch.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh – Shooosh.**

The gurney rushed to the surgery room, accompanied from far behind by the incessant infernal noise.

The troopers, officers and medics involved in the rescue effort for the Emperor would never again sleep at peace from then on. In their dreams, the formless black stain flared and wrapped around them, laughing evilly even as the inhuman machinery's two-toned noise drowned out their screams for help.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh – Shooosh.**

 **Act III; Second act - Tragicum Theatricum**

 _(Star Wars – Jedi Funeral)_

 **Nine days after Mustafar; late evening, Digestive Tea (** _hereafter renamed: Imperial Tea Hour_ **)**

 **Imperial medical center, Private Convalescence ward of the Emperor**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **)**

Sheev Palpatine was glaring unthinkingly at the harsh black and grey ceiling of the surgery room where he had awakened. It took a few short seconds for his body to perceive the gut-wrenching pain coming from his left leg, the palsy in all his limbs and the Force-awful smell that surrounded everything and permeated every item in the room.

 **That stench came from him. He had soiled himself again.**

He noted in absentminded panic that he no longer felt anything from the entirety of his epidermis. His skin was no longer responding, even to _Force Perception_. His entire body surface was charred to ash and no longer able to conduct the Force to augment his senses or reflexes to defend himself.

A whispered mechanical noise to his left was followed by a burst of wakefulness and improved cognition as hospital-grade drugs circulated through his veins.

Now almost awake enough to remember a few things from the gymnasium's debacle and comprehend events, an unnatural two-toned noise manifested, sending a sharp spike of fear and horror through his withered soul.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh – Shooosh.**

The unnatural mechanical breathing of Darth Vader was heard.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh – Shooosh.**

Coming into view on the side of the massive durasteel table, the **Most Dreaded Dark Lord of the Sith** assumed his _iconic pose_ , arms crossed strongly across his torso, just over the control panel on his chestplate. The harsh, unyielding, ceaselessly repeating noise of the breathing system echoed hollowly in the medical bay, reverberating on the dark grey instruments and shining black cabinets. At this moment, Palpatine realized that the only light in the room came from Vader's chest, from the small lights in the control panel for his life-support suit.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh – Shooosh.**

The tall monolith of black Katarn armor moved his insectoid-like great helmet towards the face of his wrecked Master and spoke words that would _haunt Palpatine forever and beyond_.

 **Shooosh** \- "Welcome back to the _Hell_ I have to endure, _My Master_." - **Shooosh** \- "I truly hoped not to be deprived of your _Exalted Presence_ so soon in my dreary, lonely life." - **Shooosh** \- "So soon after losing my _beloved Padme_ , it would have broken me." - **Shooosh** \- "Well, broken worse than I am already, at any rate." – **Shooosh.**

Palpatine at this point was certain his ears had been burned and damaged as well, or else the Force Pike discharge had done something to his eardrums. Vader was actually bemoaning the loss of his _enslaver_?

 **Karabast!** The kriffing _man-child_ fool was no longer connected to reality!

 **Ah, Hells!** What would the hot-headed _boy_ do to botch the situation now?

 **Shooosh** \- "Don't worry, my _Old Friend._ " - **Shooosh** \- Vader spoke with heavy sarcasm that even the vocalizer could not hide. - **Shooosh** \- "I plan to give you the very best medicine that the Galactic Empire has to offer." - **Shooosh** \- " _Your own kind!_ Just as you did for **ME!** " – **Shooosh.**

Darth Sidious was completely panicked to see the lights slowly come on, revealing that he was in fact chained securely to the very same butchering table where Vader had been dismembered and rebuilt by his own orders. They were in the same room, with the same tools.

And the same cruel, unthinking droids of torture.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh – Shooosh.**

( _Il Trovattore; act II, scene I - The Anvil Chorus_ )

Palpatine could only watch in soul-warping comprehension as the med-droids he had thought to be destroyed by Vader in his initial outburst of _Dark-Side Rage_ slowly rolled over to the sides of the table and began their unholy work upon his unfeeling body. The mechanical whir of saws ( _cutting what?_ ) and the shushing of air hoses to vacuum away debris were heard.

Then the pain hit him again.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh – Shooosh.**

They were operating on him without any sort of anesthesia, counting on the chains and heavy flat bars to keep him in place against the flat durasteel table. Palpatine suddenly felt a line of liquid fire around his left thigh as the droid mercilessly cut away the whole leg at the mid-tibia. This was followed by a hollow metallic thunk as a cheap, badly crafted prosthetic leg was dumped unceremoniously on the table next to the victim.

 _(J.S. Bach – Toccata and Fugue in D minor)_

The droids attached the **not even fitted** artificial limb _straight to the stump_ without bothering with a connector plate or even just filing the end of the bone where the screws and surgical cement went.

 **Shooosh – Shooosh – Shooosh.**

"Suffer _, My Master_! Suffer as I **Betray** you in your moment of weakness! Never again will you have any _Power_ or _Authority_ over my body, my life or my soul! May you rot in a pit full of offal blacker and fouler than your own worthless twisted soul!"

 **Act IV; Outro**

 _(Star Wars – The Republic Theme)_

 **Nine (** _or ten_ **) days after Mustafar; passed midnight (** _hereafter renamed: Sith Witch Hour_ **)**

 _Venator_ **-class Star Destroyer** _Promulgator_ **; imperial quarters**

 **Empire Central (** _Coruscant; the City Planet_ **); parking orbit**

Palpatine woke up in a bad startle, heart racing wildly as his _Force Senses_ came to him faster than the biological ones as was the normal way with any Force User that reached the title of Master.

The room seemed white. An eye searing, unflinching white. And the smell was of the cheap harsh antiseptic soaps used to clean the infirmaries in the Republic / Empire's military installations.

A ship then, by the subtle engine noises.

 _(Edvard Grieg – In the Halls of the Mountain King)_

As he blinked a few times, the Elder Statesman realized that his entire body was coated in a layer of translucent slime and that he was in fact seeing through this slime. And he was breathing through an aeration mask. And there were pipes in places he dared not contemplate too long.

Bacta. _Liquid_ Bacta; not cream or spray.

" _That could mean only one thing…_ " his hurt, pain-filled mind tried to remember as something dressed in white came into view from the left side. Palpatine realized that it wasn't just the Bacta that played havoc with his sight and senses. There was something clearly very wrong with him. He was hanging inside a Bacta tank, drugged out of his considerable wits.

"Good night, My Lord Emperor. I am doctor Cham Chassz, chief _regeneratologist_ for your Majesty's glorious Venator-class star destroyer **Promulgator**." The green-skinned Duro spoke in Galactic Basic. "We have a very nasty case here, Majesty. You really did a number on yourself with all those injuries and the botched attempt at medicine afterwards was almost worse."

 **Sigh…**

"I understand that _Lord Vader_ thought he was doing good by you, but honestly… What took him to use these obsolete med-droids to give you care? And why did he insist on taking you to the obsolete, disused surgical theater in the top of the med-center's spire instead of trusting the personnel in the regular operating rooms?"

 **Sigh…**

"I will never understand soldiers or why they do things the way they do…" The doctor complained to nobody as he read the patient chart on the datapad in his hands, ignoring blithely his dangling patient.

"At any rate, the epidermal burns were bad but not beyond the capacities of Bacta to regenerate. The damage in your leg was terminal and replacement by cybernetic was needed, but the first attempt was clearly botched. We will be redoing that procedure properly." The medic spoke in clipped disapproving tones as he saw the images of what Palpatine looked like upon coming aboard ship.

 **Eurkh!**

"The _nerve damage_ is concerning us presently, especially since you have not finished recovering from your first bout of electrocution by _Force-overload_ from a week and a half ago." And there was a lot of curiosity in that voice but also enough professional detachment to show the patient that _his privacy would be respected_ if he preferred not to speak of the events.

The Duro hung the datapad back on the side of the massive Bacta tank, adjusted a few controls then spoke to his patient again. "I have done the preliminaries. We will let you steep for two days and then proceed with the surgeries when we reach orbit above Naboo. We will do the minimal required to have you presentable for the State Funeral of Queen Amidala as required by Lord Vader and _Minister of State_ Sate Pestage, but under protests. You should normally be in that tank about ten days before I agree to let you out for anything other than medical procedures."

 **Sigh!** " _Politicians! As bad as soldiers when dealing with medical realities._ " The medic thought.

"Well, I will now leave you to heal in peace. I have to go see to Lord Vader. His injuries are even worse than yours, if my colleague is to be believed. If that is the case, then you will have a companion in the tank next to yours." The doctor pointed at the row of three more Bacta tanks in the room, all filled and waiting for a patient to ensconce in their healing fluid.

Palpatine could only grasp two concepts; they were still going to Naboo despite his own grievous injuries and **Vader was actually getting outside help** for his health!

 **! E'e Inecta !** They would find all his _secret impediments_ he placed inside Vader on top of informing the _man-child_ of just how bad the _tortures_ … **Hemm, Hemm** … _Tender, gentle care_ he received wasn't exactly **up to par** …

Damn! What a kreth day this turned out to be! Next thing you know, he'd learn that rabid bitch Amidala was still alive and they were honoring a decoy corpse!

 _(Star Wars – The Republic Theme)_

 _Shooosh._

The scary massive monolith of space-black Katarn, false leather and thermoplastics was standing at parade attention, or his equivalent of it anyways. Anakin stood with his arms crossed over his chest, tall, straight and intimidating just by his existence. A damnable stain of blackness in the otherwise pristine whiteness of the infirmary.

 _Shooosh._

" _His Excellency, the Most Munificent Dreaded_ **Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader** ; _Grand High Archiduke of the Galactic Empire of Man, First Heir of Palpatine and Inheritor of the Throne of Man_ ".

 _Shooosh._

Anakin was practically choking on his own laughter inside his **Mask of Vader** as the poor secretary for the Promulgator's medical bay tried desperately to type the long lines of _politically charged drivel_ he was gleefully spewing at her. The poor woman's face was priceless when he told her glibly that his _business cards_ weren't yet printed because until about five days ago the medics down in Coruscant still weren't certain he would survive, let alone be healthy enough to actively accomplish all those jobs.

 _Shooosh._

The receptionist took his ID chit and Code Cylinders, placed them in the appropriate readers and then began the laborious process of filling out the patient informations, _Medical Procurations_ and _Power of Attorney_ documents to grant Lord Vader the **decision-making abilities** that were needed to keep the Galactic Emperor alive and functionnal.

 _Shooosh._

As he was finishing the flimsiwork with the rather pleasant older woman, Vader was accosted by the Duro who was in charge of regeneration therapies and major surgeries aboard. He wasn't human. This day kept getting better! Anybody not human would have a lot of trouble falling for Palpatine's poisonous words, especially in the state he was in at the time.

 _Shooosh._

"Lord Vader." The doctor began glibly, only to be interrupted by the sound of the mechanical respirator that somehow had not been so loud or problematic while Ani was chatting with the secretary. The sudden two-toned noise filled out the air of the reception area, inflicting an ambiance of menace and despair upon all who heard it. Several troopers loitering idly outside the office turned around and ran away before their nominal superior paid attention to their existences.

The medics weren't so lucky.

 **Shooosh.**

"Yes, doctor? I trust that His Imperial Majesty has been located adequately. For YOUR continued good health, he had better be treated far better than current status indicates." Vader threatened perfunctorily.

 **Shooosh.**

"Well, yes… Well, you see, that is what I want to speak with you about. It is important in fact. About His Majesty's predicament. We should take this to the privacy of my office, it would be better." The doctor replied while trying to remember if Empire officials could actually kill or torture on sight as the man was inferring.

 **Shooosh.**

"Unless you have a problem that is a military secret or classified by Imperial Intelligence, we should bee capable of handling the matter here and now. My time is precious, doctor, and my own health not so stable that I have any patience left for pedantic nonsense. Speak plainly and efficiently, or else you will need the services of your colleagues promptly." Vader declared with a bluntness even Anakin normally refrained from.

Then again, the **Mask of Vader** was supposed to be reputed for uncouth boorishness as much as violence and cruelty. _Palpy-Baby_ should have thought better of that when he _created his character_.

 **Shooosh.**

Grabbing his courage with both hands, the green-skinned Duro explained "Lord Vader, what was done to His Majesty before bringing him aboard was nothing short of inhumane torture. It clearly was not intended with any sort of pain relief or succor in mind. Maybe his body would have been functional, and maybe he could even have been minutely mobile, but none of it was done with any sort of medical ethics or hospital methodology in mind!"

 **Shooosh.**

Vader seemed to stand still and immobile against the flows of Time and Reality as he processed the statement inside of his dark, impervious armored self. Finally he seemed to shake himself out of some strange torpor and asked in a low voice that was turned into a _pitiful whine_ by the vocalizer. "Are you saying that what I did to him wasn't the very best, most kind medical treatment that the Empire has on hand for situations like this?"

 **Shooosh.**

The two medics were somewhat dumbfounded by both the actual lack of knowledge revealed by the question and the soft, insecure tone that somehow the mechanical voice-machine managed to project.

"Well, Lord Vader… No… Not even close. In fact, this would classify as torture, even on most primitive worlds stuck in pre-FTL cultures." The Duro male passed a weary hand over his bald head.

"The surface burns were not treated with anything at all, just debrided the dead skin then left exposed raw to the elements. The leg was essentially shorn off with a vibro-teeth chain-saw and then an absolutely dismal prosthetic leg was placed without any preparation of the surgery site at all. That limb would have been only semi-functional and caused inhumane pain every time the Emperor walked on it. And the depth and gravity of repeated energy burns in the nervous system, all over the body… It's a minor miracle that the man is still able to open his eyes, let alone have any cognizance of reality. Honestly, we are afraid there will be some sort of brain damage or nerve-caused handicaps when he finally comes out of Bacta."

 **Shooosh.**

"If that's all true, doctor, then why did **HE** tell me that this was the very best medical treatment that the newly built Empire could give its faithful servants? **HE** showed me the room and told me of the wonders that could be produced inside of its confines by the incredibly advanced droids **HE** kept there."

 **Shooosh.**

The secretary dared to ask a question in a low, fearful voice. She had taken down Vader's identity and credentials to establish that he was in fact responsible for the health of the Emperor. His ID said 23 years old. He was a decade younger than her youngest son. With her motherly instincts waking up in a bad way, the elderly woman tried to create a report with the armored figure standing in front of her imitation-wood desk.

"Tell me, why would the Emperor take you to that old, abandoned room and tell you these things? Those machines had been disconnected for ages already when I joined the Republic Security as a medical assistant over four decades ago. How did he even know what was in that spire atop the med-center?" She asked in her kindest tone, while still mindful that this was in fact an incredibly powerful high official, veteran soldier of the Clone Wars and, if her guess was right, a _master-level user_ of the Force too.

 **Shooosh.**

The mournful voice emanating from the helmet surprised both medics with its forlorn tones and the heavy burden of doubts and uncertainties it carried. " **HE** showed me when **HE** took me there ten days ago, after I fell in combat against a Jedi traitor on Mustafar. The heat from the lava river singed my lungs and seared my flesh then ignited my clothes until I looked like an over-braised slab of cheap bantha rump. The Jedi had cut off three of my limbs too. **Sheev** took me to the top of the med-center and told me I would get the very best care **HE** could give his _Important Young Friend_. **HE** said it would get better; that I would be able to live long, to be well enough, mobile enough, to serve in the military again as I wanted to help him keep the Empire safe from Jedi and assorted traitor scums."

 **Shooosh.**

Vader paused before asking the most world-shattering question he could drop on them: "Wasn't **HE** right? About the care? _Palpatine?_ Wasn't it the best care **HE** could give me? I truly thought it was… **HE** did it to me ten days ago, so when **HE** got burned like that and his leg was blown off… I just did what I knew… I did what **HE** told me was the best **HE** had available for any _loyal, important friend_ that **HE** wanted to keep alive and healthy by our side. I did to him what **HE** did to me… Wasn't it right?"

 **Shooosh.**

The unbound horror on the faces of the medical personnel was a balm on the young man's injured soul. At least a few people still existed out there that thought Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader did not deserve the inhumanity of what Palpatine had put him through. Now they wanted to take him into a clean, sterile room to take off his armor and commit a complete, thorough diagnostic of his entire body and fluids to see what needed correcting urgently.

His story of getting everything done cold, with minimal drugs and watered down anesthetics really got to the two healer's hearts. The fact that Anakin had switched out his good limbs for the old set of badly crafted, misaligned ones before going up to the Promulgator would increase his credibility. The original limbs that His Pruneyness had given him all had **secret override chipsets** in them to remotely deactivate them, thus rendering Anakin into a limbless dummy, easy for the killing.

This gave Ani the idea to imitate the system inside his own chosen implants and prosthetics.

The doctors would do a complete analysis and then find criminally depraved _remote control programs_ inside the **Pain Managers** grafted into his spine to inflict pain or exacerbate existing pain instead of blocking it to help him heal. He had added these _little nuggets of horror_ himself just so he could accuse _His Master_ of remote-controlling him like a puppet and zapping him with **neural agony** at a whim to increase the pathos and morbidity of the situation.

He would also blame His Dear Old Friend for the brand new override chipset added to his original prosthetic right hand at the same time that the other three limbs were grafted on. The external respirator would be explained as the best that Palpatine could produce while the baby-bantha lungs inside his chest would be explained as a failsafe that he himself had done a few days later since he realized that the breathing system was in fact rather vulnerable during combat operations. He would give them a sob story about doing on his own, paid with his little salary from the Jedi cult because Palpatine being from Naboo's aristocratic class would never accept animal parts inside a higher sentient being.

In order to keep living, to survive combat in the name of the Empire, he needed the lungs but would lose his friend and the man's respect if he ever found out about this procedure having been done. He would need several other similar grafts in the coming months too, but was afraid of asking and didn't know any place other than the med-center or the destroyed Temple of Jedi where such things could be done safely. Above all else though, he needed privacy and confidentiality to keep in his life what few people still loved and cared for him; which meant only Palpatine as everybody else had been Jedi and therefore traitors that needed killing quickly.

Mortified by his pathetic story of Jedi, Sith, Masters, Apprenticeships, Initiatic rituals and submissive servileness, the doctors were flabbergasted that such things could still happen after almost 50,000 years of the Galactic Republic existing as the central government of the Known Worlds.

In their furious anger at his pathos and misery, they promised him to keep his privacy and lock tightly his files and medical results. When they learned his birth name and real identity, all hells broke loose.

Oh yes, the doctors would help him quite a lot with things he couldn't do by himself, then they would have **uncomfortable questions** for his dear _Imperial Self_ when he came out of his fetid potage.

This would be one **BAD TRIP** that Darth Sidious would never forget in his life. And what Anakin had **planned on Naboo** … Well, he had pranked the crèche-masters quite a lot and was used to exchanging favors with others to get things done remotely when he was absent from the scene of the crime to dodge both the surveillance and the post-action blame. He had managed his Strategies and Tactics during the Clone Wars the exact same way and was still to this day the best, most successful General of the war on both sides. Only Grievous came close to him but had not managed to stay alive, so that spoke a few things about that heap of junk.

Yes… The spectacle on Naboo would be well worth participating in…

"I have **Betrayed** you, _My Master_! And I shall do so yet again very soon! **Mwu ah ah ah**! Such are the _Ways of the Sith_!"

 _(Edvard Grieg – In the Halls of the Mountain King)_

 **PERSONAE CREDITUM**

This was a presentation of

 _The Coruscanti Operatic Performance Complex_

 _The Lord High Master,_ **Pascal in Quebec** _, producer and conductor_

Featuring

 _Madame De Naberrie's nomadic comedic troupe_

 _In collaboration with:_

 _The Sith - Darksome Thespians Union_

 _The Storming White-Boys Ensemble_

 _And the Glow-Stick Wavers from Space_

Musical Ensemble composed and presented by

 _The Choir of the Republican Red Elite Senatorial Guards_

 _The Gungan Cacophonic Disturbia_

 _The Baktoid Automata_ **Self-Assembly-Line** _of Musical Droids_

Casting and crew calls by

 _The Colicoid Creation Nest_

 _The Geonosian Hive_

Makeup and costumes

 _The Union of Jawas Junkers (costumes & accoutrements)_

 _The Night Sisters (makeup & hair)_

Security, mayhem and extortions

 _Grievous Magna; General Guards and Commandos_ " _illegally limitless_ "

 _The Droidekas Syndicate;_ " _Never another unpaid entry at your establishment_ "

Ticketing, admissions and customer services

 _The Banking Clans of Muunilist (admissions)_

 _The Trade Federation (tickets, concessions and fan merchandise)_

 _The Great Venerable Sarlaac (swallowing customers that complain)_

Scenery, decors and backdrops ( **and booby traps** )

 _The Techno Union; Unionized Durasteel workers, Local 501_

 _The Nubian Design Collective of Naboo_

 _Kuat systems Engineering, Kuat Sector_

 _Mandal Motors & Technicals_

Mobility and vehicles

 _Rendili Star Drives_ " _We build stuff bigger than a movie star's ego!_ "

 _Sienar Fleet systems_ " _TIE shuttles for the stars_ "

Advertisement and promotional services

 _Death Star - holonet signalers co; "Illuminating the masses in the name of culture"_

 _The Galactic Cantina; union of bar and tavern gossips around the Galaxy_

 _The Hutt Cartel; amateurs of fine vice for millennia_

 _Galactic News Network "If you say it, we'll repeat it, no proofs necessary"_

 _"It's just a story until somebody believes it"_

Script, scene plays and revisions

 _The Jedi Guild of folklore and anachronistic storytellers_

 _The Inquisitorius; very strictly disciplined college of science and languages_

 _Cybot Galactica Scriptwriter droids SCN-46 through SCN-54_

 **We thank you for your kind patronage**

 **And your presence at our little soiree.**

 **Adeste, plebes!**

 **Until we meet again.**

Curtain drops; thump staff, light candles.

People leave.


	5. Chapter 5

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

 **WARNING;** the language level of this one is not too particularly trashy when we consider a story based on starships, pirates, soldiers, law breakers and politicians enough to fill several Death Stars. However, as I always warn people who read my work: this language was pretty much normal in the school yard 30 years ago when I was a teenager. So, how can you have such a thin skin and be part of the same culture on the same continent if this is really that offensive to you? Where did you spend the last few decades, if you can't take a few hard words from the mouths of kids when these words have been around since before World War I?

 **Author's note:** for this chapter Anakin / Vader has begun a new phase of his physical re-adaptation with ' _officially new_ ' prosthetics and better long-term medications. A three day sojourn in a Bacta tank helped a lot with the surface problems and a newly crafted life-support suit would complete the setup for the immediate needs until he could redesign and rebuild everything by himself, including more weapons than just a lightsaber. You don't go to war against a Galaxy-wide rebellion with just that in hand; the Clone Wars taught him that painful lesson about Jedi idiocy quite thoroughly.

 **Star Wars**

 **HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT**

 **Chapter 5; Tenebrans Magnum**

 **Bad Bacta, Badder Trip**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March; played on a kazoo)_

 **Days ten to twelve after Mustafar;** _Time fluctuates_ _in a haze of narcotics_

 _Venator_ **-class Star Destroyer** _Promulgator_ **; imperial quarters**

 **Direction Naboo (** _actual route classified_ **)**

Sheev Palpatine was not having pleasant dreams; no he was not.

Firstly, who the kreth was it that gave the doctors the right to place him in Bacta? He didn't! Of course, at the time he was somewhat incapacitated and insensate. Not that he complained. Not anymore.

 _Shudders of phantom pain._

Vader had obtained vengeance upon _His Master_ by doing unto _Him_ what had been done to the idiotic gullible _man-child_ fool just days before. Oh, the ignominy! To be so basely laid low by someone who wasn't even an actual Apprentice yet! He hadn't had the boy in genuine tutelage yet and the crapulent little demon had already maimed and reduced his master to this!

 **Truly the boy had untapped potential!**

Such verve! Such cruelty! And his well timed micro-bursts of Force to move the soldiers as they shot around or triggering the Force Pikes to make it look an accident… Yes, Darth Vader had potential if he could whelm the gumption and skills to pull off the very public act of retribution against his own _Imperatis Personae_ and survive the investigation afterwards.

 **Mwu ah ah ah!**

The Jedi had no idea of the treasure they had denied for years! But he was his, now!

Palpatine's attention was drawn to something moving outside the Bacta tank. The Emperor was a bit miffed at the viscosity and opacity of the stuff. It obviously wasn't the special grade kept in reserve for his personal use that was fresh from the manufacturing plants of Xucphra Corporation on Thyferra. No, by the smell and taste, this was the standard liquid used for the troopers and officers in the navy. The kriffers were shortchanging him! Oh, the depravity! The medics would suffer for this insult!

Darth Sidious's train of thought was completely derailed as the tank recyclers began to work on circulating the liquid to remove debris and rewarm the gel. The machinery's noise and vibrations through the cylinder weren't the cause of his distraction, though. No, it was the fact that as the filters worked, the Bacta liquid became more transparent until it was almost as clear as the crystal walls of the tank, allowing him to see the person outside.

 **KARABAST!** Would the parasite never let him be?

It was the stupid blond bimbo nurse from the med-center. What was she doing aboard a navy ship?

The buxom woman finished taking her patient's vitals then clipped the datapad back to the tank for use by the next shift of watchers. Looking at the clock on the wall, she smirked and then walked over to the door which she locked with a personal code.

As the woman sashayed back to the Bacta tank, she began to undo her hair out of its regulation bun, letting the long cascade of blond fall down her back to just above the waist. She glomped the Bacta cylinder's side as if it were an old lover come back to town then passed a finger on the crystal wall in a truly suggestive manner.

"Haaannn… Don't worry _Palpy-Baby_ , your good friend Avarinia will take good care of you… I know you can hear me in there, the mean old doctor Chassz said so…"

Now, Palpatine being an avaricious, cruel old lecher with a penchant for vice and depravity wasn't above exploiting sexually some sentient that threw themselves at him. He was well aware that **Power** attracted many admirers and some, like moths, were attracted to his station more than his person. The high of saying " _I did an emperor_ " was the same as " _I did a holonet star_ "; not at all about having a relationship beyond purely physical. Still, at his age it was better than nothing and he would take what he could. It would be a nice change from having to _Force Compel_ a senatorial aide or purchase a pleasure slave on a backwater world. Neither lasted very long anyways.

As the erstwhile _Emperor of Man_ was slowly getting himself to a point where he could relax and enjoy the free strip-show he was offered by the nurse, and maybe set up something later when he was out of Bacta, the very worse happened.

As the ' _woman's_ ' outer service scrubs were removed, they revealed a humanoid physiognomy that wasn't what Palpatine expected. In fact, it was something he most certainly didn't want any of.

As nurse ' _Avari_ _nia_ ' kept twirling and rubbing on the side of the Bacta tank, it became horrendously evident to Palpatine that he was being stalked by a transvestite in drag.

The very male organs ( _rather well endowed, in truth_ ) were not at all concealed by the almost transparent little silk thingies that he/she wore under the scrubs.

Nor was the person's ' _emotional state_ ' at all hidden, as demonstrated obviously by the gyrations and languorous frottage on the clear crystal cylinder.

" **Ooohhnnn!** _Palpy-Baby!_ Just you wait, my little _Palpounet-dearie_! I'll get you out of there right quick I will, and then we'll have all the time we want together..." she claimed, ending with a wet sloppy kiss on the Bacta tank about where Palpatine's face was located.

Eyes agog and mouth gaping inside the aerator mask, the _Munificent Sovereign of the Galaxy_ could only do one thing: " **Vaaadddeeerrr!** " he screamed in soul-warped terror.

 **Good Bacta, pleasant dreams**

 _(Star Wars – The Republic Theme)_

 **Days ten to twelve after Mustafar;** _Time fluctuates_ _in a haze of narcotics_

 _Venator_ **-class Star Destroyer** _Promulgator_ **; imperial quarters**

 **Direction Naboo (** _actual route classified_ **)**

Medical confidentiality? _Yeah, riiiight!_

Anakin had four years of experience on Republic Navy ships from the Clone Wars; he knew how things operated and how people lived while serving aboard the massive metal boats that guarded the free-world from pirates and monsters. It hadn't been a big gamble when he admitted to the reception nurse and doctor Chassz his **genuine birth identity** and _health situation_. Navy ships were like sieves; the more information they held, the more they leaked all over the place. And nothing was faster than scuttlebutt about high officers or heroic generals in wartime.

The regeneralogists, surgeons and pharmacists aboard ship had all been warned about **WHO** and **WHAT** the dreaded _Darth Vader_ truly was under that armored **Mask**. The information made it down to the prosthesiologists and medical instrumentiers in the ship's technical department so they could craft new limbs and a new suit according to Anakin's designs. These blabbed to the field medics who just had to tell the armorers and so on... By lunch on the first day of travel, everybody, his shaak and the beast's fleas knew exactly **WHO** and **WHAT** was contained inside that black Katarn life-support suit and who he had been married to.

Palpatine would have three different fits when he heard this. The _Dark-Side_ thrives with the lies of secrecy, thus allowing blackmail and power plays, but perishes under the Light of freely spoken Truth.

Let's just say our _fake-Sith_ Anakin saw a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of his health care, especially the ' **care** ' portion of it. The people around him were less scared, less repulsed by the suit's appearance and then when they took it all apart to immerse him in blessedly soothing Bacta... Well, there were quite a few emotional displays when confronted by what remained of the _People's_ much beloved **Hero-With-No-Fear** who won them so many victories during the just-ended Clone Wars.

The pharmacists spoke with the hematologists and got back at the regeneration team with a brand new concoction specifically calibrated for Anakin's internal problems. He had been damaged by heat, fire, volcanic ashes and radiation. He had partial blood poisoning because the dialysis machines he had used to date were not as finely calibrated as they should have been. He was also malnourished as he should have been consuming Vitapaste daily, not just once a week, and should also have drunk some Bactade or Kolto extract at least daily as well.

As such the pharmacists worked feverishly on something and managed to innovate on the fly something truly memorable that, if ever tried before, was never published or spoken of. They took _Kolto_ which is a naturally occurring liquid and dissolved the also naturally occurring _Bacta_ into it before injecting the mixture directly into Anakin's kidneys via the Bacta tank's dialysis lines. The results on his heart, liver, kidneys and other organs were phenomenal even with just two days of this treatment. The circulatory system regeneration was such a success inside of four hours that the team ordered the treatment be extended to his lungs by aerosolizing the compound through the breathing mask that allowed for total immersion in the tank.

Doctor Chassz had ordered that he be fed Bactade and Kolto along each Vitapaste meal through the tracheotomy port on the side of his neck to avoid his gag reflex if he was asleep when the feeding pumps initiated. This allowed Ani to eat a very soothing semi-solid diet similar to warm porridge instead of the cold Vitapaste ration he had scheduled weekly up to date.

Because it was known in advance that the 23 year old would receive a less liquid diet during and after his stay in Bacta, the medics decided to use the time when he was drugged insensate before putting him in the cuve to operate his organic body to repair a few things. Namely, they cut open, unsealed and rebuilt his anal sphincter and rectal cavity to allow natural digestive processes to start again, thus allowing to remove the internal colostomy pipes and port from his body. The urinary tract was temporarily redirected to the newly constructed cloaca until his external structures could be surgically rebuilt. The corresponding external systems in the life-support suit's new design no longer had the waste pump and pouch to reflect this new reality.

It so happened that actually reconstructing his external genitals would not be so long or arduous. As Anakin had already accepted animal parts inside his thorax, his biology was already partially adapted to this; they just needed to match the animal type to avoid an immune rejection. By using minuscules exemplars of meat, fat, veins and nerves from clean sectors of his own body to implant into similar cellular samples from a freshly harvested medical-grade bantha embryo, the geneticists and pharmacologists aboard were able to grow and mold the base of what his own organs had looked like. They used the medical scans from the multiple times he was hospitalized for war injuries and compared to the scans done in the Temple of Jedi during his growth and education there. Now the process of growth and molding was lengthy so the actual installation surgery would take place almost three weeks after Queen Amidala's state funeral but at this point Anakin thought it was all bonus on top of his meager soldier's pay.

The fact that the ship had to do an impromptu little detour to a side-system for two hours before going back on track was neither here nor there. Since the doctors got five whole still living bantha embryos in a large stasis chest for their troubles, it would help solve quite a few of the beloved General Skywalker's conditions and was worth the efforts.

Palpatine would definitely **HATE** that with a passion. Humm... What a conundrum: would he hate most that Anakin's _health improved_ or the fact people occasionally referred to him by _his birth name_ in public?

" _Questions, questions, questions... And so few answers..._ " (Ani smirks in Bacta sleep...)

Light. Soothing. Warm. Organic. Welcoming light. Smells of blood and Bacta. Whispers of machines finely tuned. Heavy thermoplastics, thick durasteel, solid tempered transpasteel. More warm light. More smell of fresh blood. Pain, just enough to waken the soul if it were still asleep.

" _Anakin. My name is Anakin Skywalker, given to me by my mother at my birth. No matter what happens, no matter what is done, no matter what I have lost, my name was, is, and will always be Anakin Skywalker. I swear this by the Mothers Moons, the desert winds and the sweet water hidden in the crevices of the rocky berms. I am Anakin Skywalker and neither pain, shame, nor death will take away what I am._ "

That was the mantra he silently whispered inside his soul, eyes closed and mouth set in a reflexive crooked smile since he awoke abruptly when the Promulgator's chief regeneratologist's caring hands began to hoist him out of the Bacta cylinder. Anakin could feel that this time the med-droids had been rather generous with the sedatives. He felt precious little from his organic body other than motion and being dried, first with a soft air-vacuum hose then softly dabbed with aseptic medical towels.

" _I am Anakin Skywalker. I am the son of Shmi Skywalker. I am the pupil of the Masters who raised me at the Temple of Jedi. I am the brother of the beings who followed me in battle. I am the keeper of the younglings at the Temple of Jedi. I am the husband of Padme Naberrie, The Good Queen Amidala of planet Naboo, and father of her children. I am the Protector of the Living Force and the Laws of Galactic Civilization. I am Anakin who Walks the Skies and kisses the Stars._ "

The depressed, damaged 23 year old could now freely breathe, even without the help of the ever-present massive machines arrayed around the surgical table. It allowed him the time to peacefully mentally recite the mantras of his **Identity** and **Creed** without the ill-timed interruptions of the **Mask** 's breather. This was the final step he had never overcome when practicing the quiet _static meditation_ preferred by the monks at the Temple of Jedi. If he could just lie there a bit longer, maybe he could actually attend the transcendent state needed for true static meditation the way Yoda used to teach.

 **Zzz… Snore… Zzz…** Nope; better luck next time.

Everything was going well in the best of all worlds since he could sleep through the medical procedures that connected the ' **newly crafted** ' ( _completely his own designs from scratch this time_ ) hands and legs to his slightly repaired body. They even went and **cleaned** then reprogrammed the **Pain Managers** in his spine and skull. He really did not need to be awake to feel the nerve searing, muscle clenching jabs of pain again if he could avoid them.

The surgeons had finished all neural connections and sealed all surgical sites; they were about to inject Anakin with an adrenaline dilution to rouse him from his deep healing slumber when an inhuman scream of intermingled horror and fear resounded phonically, vibrationally and psychically through the Force all around the ship.

" **Vaaadddeeerrr!** " came the emperor's suave dulcet tones.

Still deep in sleep on the operating table, Anakin smiled in subconscious satisfaction.

" **Mwu ah ah ah!** I have **Betrayed** you, _My Master_! Lo and behold as even in medicated slumber I continue to harass and debase your power and reputation before the eyes of the worlds! Nowhere will you ever be safe from my cruel vengeance again!"

"Get this **THING** off my Bacta tank in the immediateness of the moment! I command it!" the emperor screeched like a scared little grade-school girl, completely unaware of his apprentice's pleasure. Although, honestly, at the time _Palpy-Baby_ wasn't aware of much besides his growing horror and feeling helpless, imprisoned inside the Bacta cylinder at the hands of the _gender-fluid_ harridan.

 **Rise, Lord Vader!**

 _(Two Steps From Hell – Blackheart)_

 **Day twelve after Mustafar;** _U_ _nfortunate return to sobriety_

 _Venator_ **-class Star Destroyer** _Promulgator_ **; imperial quarters**

 **Planet Naboo, Chommel Sector;** _parking orbit_

Anakin breathed deeply the medicated air supplied by the newly crafted rebreather _cum_ aerosolizer system he had designed and the ship's excellent crew had then built and tested extensively during his medically mandated aside from duty.

Vader smirked behind his **Mask** as he remembered the nice wake-up call he got from _His Master_ 's fear-fueled plight. " _Oh, good times!_ " he thought silently to avoid garnering attention. Now that he was mobile again, Palpatine could be lurking in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to strike at his young apprentice to show him his place in life.

 **Bah! The Jedi tried that; look at the results now.**

Anakin concentrated on the great Katarn helmet's multiple scanners and immersive holo-display options. Thanks to a nifty neural interface that he designed but the surgeons made so much better and more efficient, he could control the entire thing without buttons or voice commands. The permanent neural wires came out of his skull at five points: both temples, behind where both ears would be when reconstructed and at the nape of the neck, just on top of the lowest **Pain Manager**. The wires were connected to almost invisible micro-induction transmitters that allowed for a full-bandwidth holonet signal or computational data-stream to pass from the suit or outside system directly to his brain.

For any other person this would have fried their brain but Anakin had experience with neural interfaces as he had built and programmed a few in the Temple when the Council masters had asked that he record a holocron of his wartime life, skills and experiences to help prepare the padawans for their field positions as commanders in the Grand Army of the Republic.

In reality, Anakin had been fiddling with holocrons and neuronal computers from a much younger age thanks to the beneficial influences of master Nantosta Kaab's holocron. The female twi'lek medic had pushed Anakin towards sectors of the medical sciences where his particular brand of affinity for mechanoid devices would be well applied. Hence, dear little Ani could redesign and reprogram every system in the life-support suit if just given a few days of time and access to his usual tools.

The newly crafted suit was built with two power systems, two breathers and two dialysis devices, all redundant and interconnected to allow bypasses from one to the other. This was to deal with situations so often seen on a ship where one system's pump worked but the plumbing was jammed or twisted shut while the other had clear pipes but a stalled pump. There were two CPU's with one located in the chestplate's control panel and the other in the cavity in the top of the great helmet. There was an auxiliary rebreather and two small air canisters in the lower flared parts of the helmet.

The same type of synthetic nerves and artificial movement inducing fibers that worked inside his prosthetics had been built into the entire suit to help reinforce his mobility, strength, speed and agility along his physical reflexes. These exoskeletal boosters were connected neurally to induction ports on the organic parts of his limbs thus insuring his continued movement and defense in case someone managed to affect the actual prosthetics into shutting down as Palpatine had planned in the first version he gave Vader. In normal operations, the combined strength of the prosthetics plus the exo-boosters would make Darth Vader an incredible physical brute that would be a nightmare to stop.

This physical enhancement was backed by a defensive layer of Gungan water-shield that ran along the suit at exactly one inch of every surface and plane of the armored cyberneticized clothing. This would guarantee Vader's capacity to exist in water, vacuum or extreme temperatures for prolonged stays until back-up came for him. It also had the tactical advantage of allowing him to make it look like he still needed the thoroughly filtered medicated air to live or else he would die immediately. This charade could save his life in the near future, especially against some noob bounty hunter out for a quick payday or enterprising imperial officer that thought well ahead of his station in life. Such a nasty surprise it would be when Anakin faked a nice, spectacular _death scene_ only to _miraculously resuscitate_ and kill everyone in the vicinity in the blink on an eye.

Added to the bracers of his suit were pairs of small beam weapons combining a mini-laser and a pocket-blaster thus giving him long precise shots or short concussive blasts at choice on both arms. Under those two systems was lodged a jack-knife vibro-blade 10 inches long for last-ditch self defense if every other weapon was removed or disabled by an EMP wave. Another amusing little backup Vader installed was the ability for his Mask's mouthpiece to exhale diverse sedatives, truth drugs or poisons that were stored in miniature pressurized canisters inside the chest-mounted controller on his thorax.

The boot soles were fitted with retractable durasteel toe-like claws and magnetic field emitters to allow for EVA sorties and combat, especially since the much-lauded General had a habit of getting kicked off the ships he hitched a ride on during the last few years…

Finally, the great black armour-weave cloak that would become an iconic nightmare in its own right after a few years of Vader wearing it in public had undergone several upgrades. It now had double thickness and the void in-between the layers held an omni-voltaic textile that received and converted to electricity any form of light, heat, radiation, vibration or even Force discharges so as to recharge a series of 24 small power cells spread around the cape. These power cells energized low-grade shield emitters sewn into the void of the cloak to generate a defense field at almost half of R2D2's shield thus giving Vader quite the survival power in prolonged fights. On top of that, the cells powered the emergency communicator hidden in the decorative clasp then allowed to temporarily convert the omni-voltaic layer into an energized antenna to boost the signal to the same strength as the full sized field-comms module installed on hoverbikes and walkers.

 **Anakin had remade himself into a two-legged walking tank of oily blackness.**

Thusly equipped for combat from suit-contact to 100 meters away, the _Most Dreaded Dark Lord amongst the Sith_ was finally ready to make his public appearance and claim his place as the Empire's **Armored Fist of Authority**.

 **Planetary arrival**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Day twelve after Mustafar**

 _Venator_ **-class Star Destroyer** _Promulgator_ **; Bridge**

 **Planet Naboo, Chommel Sector;** _orbit & Theed (capital of Naboo)_

The bridge doors hissed as they opened, letting in the dark fearsome form of the Empire's _Supreme Commander of the Military Forces_. Every soldier on the deck tensed just a bit before they remembered who he really was under the **Mask**. General Skywalker; their **beloved** Hero.

 _Shooosh._

The respirator went, its automatically regulated noise intruding in the minds and souls of the sailors as they tried to concentrate on their tasks. Darth Vader walked around the enclosure, hands clasped behind his back, great helmet panning from left to right slowly as he took in the efficient running of operations before addressing the captain of the ship.

 **Shooosh** \- "Captain! Prepare the carrier for atmospheric descent!" - **Shooosh** \- "Contact Theed space control to have a landing pad and escorts readied for our arrival within the hour!" - **Shooosh** \- "Have an escort of fighters out and surround us for the maneuver!" - **Shooosh.**

Captain Dfirru Pseta, a human from Coruscant, had served aboard one of the ships that Anakin Skywalker had commanded during the Clone Wars as a lieutenant-commander. His recent promotion by two ranks to captain had surprised him and several others but now he had an inkling of what exactly was afoot. Nodding at the younger man's back, the officer went about ordering his ship and crew for the descent maneuvers.

 _Shooosh._

Venator-class carriers were kilometer-long mammoths of durasteel and transpasteel that could flatten a city if landed wrong. Since they would land near the planet's capital city, they had absolutely no margins for error. As the well trained crew went about their duties, the doors opened again, letting in the darksome fear inducing presence of the Emperor.

 _Shooosh._

From inside the deep cowl of his robes of office, Standing short and crooked with both hands clasping the crystal pommel of his Korriban ebony cane, the older male struck a less impressive figure for a statesman of his advanced age than he used to project via holonet just a few weeks ago.

 _Shooosh._

Vader's damnable mechanical respirator's noise embalmed the air with its two-toned rhythm, incessant and relentless, driving itself into the consciousness of every person and droid on the deck. Even Palpatine pursed his lips in annoyance at the disturbing sound that intruded so rudely into his thought processes. He should have designed the damned thing differently. It was a cruel mobile prison that he had designed for his apprentice but the noises and odors of the thing were really more bother than what he was ready to tolerate, especially in polite company. Meaning himself, of course…

 _Shooosh._

Palpatine walked slowly, still unused to his prosthetic left leg and its limitations despite liberal usage of Dark-Side _Force Perceptions_ and reinforcements to employ it properly. And the pain... The kreth doctors were shorting his pain meds, he was certain of it! Finally arriving at the front of the bridge, he stood before the great panoramic window and asked "Well, Lord Vader, what is the situation? We are above Naboo already... What of our transport to the surface?"

 _Shooosh._

The monarch's answer came in the form of the 400 meter long bow doors over the dorsal hangar opening to let out a dozen small Delta 7 Aethersprite snub fighters that assumed positions as the carrier's escorts while the massive valves closed again. Warning lights changed color around the ship to indicate the change in status and attitude as the massive flying vehicle began to lower its bow towards the atmosphere and powered up the main drives, increasing speed and gravitic fields to maintain proper control through the descent.

 _Shooosh._

The emperor was no stranger to capital ships going planet-side and it wasn't his first ride in a Venator but he wondered about Vader's decision to bring the main ship down to ground.

 **Shooosh** \- "Captain! Plan us a route that passes OVER Theed." - **Shooosh** \- "Let us show the Nubians what an emperor coming home from conquest looks like!" - **Shooosh** \- "Make certain to go at a quarter our atmospheric speed when we cross the city. Let the people see the imperial emblems on the hull. Let them know that **Power Penultimate** comes to them!" - **Shooosh** _._

Darth Sidious smiled evilly inside his cowl. His apprentice was already immersing in the Dark-Side of the Force, taking power, prestige and satisfaction from the fear, humiliation and despondency of the lesser beings around him. Good! Good! It would make confirming his **Fall into Darkness** so much easier and more permanent.

 _Shooosh._

Although his rather poor beginner's moves had been well done in the med-center back on Imperial Central, it was simply that; **beginner's luck** and a few cheap parlor tricks that even Jedi would have been ashamed to use in public. Sidious would have to work on the boy's sense of identity, self-worth and implant in him some culture, majesty and sense of grandiosity before he could truly be his chosen heir and successor in the name of Darth Bane, their spiritual ancestor.

 _Shooosh._

Now if only he could find a way to silence that infernal duo-phonic noisemaker! Karabast! That thing was annoying in short order!

 **Royal burial**

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 **Day twelve after Mustafar**

 **Royal Plaza**

 **Planet Naboo, Chommel Sector;** _Theed (capital of Naboo)_

The people of Theed saw the vast shadow envelop the city at mid-afternoon as the huge ship lowered beneath the cloud cover, hovering for a few seconds as it transited from orbital descent to horizontal vectoring in the aerial realm. Slowly, the massive engines pushed the vessel forward at a pompously slow pace, effecting a slow, graceful curving path over the city for almost ten minutes before touching down in a vast green field outside the city walls.

The small escort fighters took up a circular orbit around the carrier to protect the area from incoming enemies while a ventral loading ramp opened to let out the ground troops to establish the land-based safety perimeter.

A half-hour later, the night-blue speeder of the emperor came out of the metal beast's belly, escorted in front by an open-topped speeder holding four officers and two boxy armored troop carriers in the rear. The imperial procession made its way through the streets of Theed until it reached the palace to be welcomed by the sitting monarch; Queen Apailana.

The procession stopped on the public plaza just a dozen paces from the palace main portico where the queen and her entourage came to welcome the August Emperor and his Heir, the Grand Archiduke.

Anakin was bored stiff out of his poor Jedi monk wits and those weren't all that much to begin with... The descent was short but sweet as anytime a Venator came to ground it was exhilarating to see, especially from the bridge. The only better vantage was from the very bow, in the secondary gunnery control chamber. That bay window was just stupendous when going through the clouds.

 _Sigh..._

The trip by speeder through Theed had been melancholy enough for Ani without the ceaseless prattle of _His Pruneyness_ who was in full ' _granddad_ ' persona for the benefit of the driver, officers and politos that escorted them to Naboo. What the kriffing moons was a ' **moff** ' and what did it eat in winter? Honestly, Anakin thought that there should be a committee charged with naming official government posts and equipments to avoid elderly politicians from straining their brains coming up with idiocies that would make the entire Galaxy cringe at the stupendous childishness of the words.

Thankfully, no one seemed in the mood to deal with Darth Vader on an ordinary day; when he was in a bad mood like today it kept even the ass-kissers away. Since it had been made abundantly clear he was **Palpatine's Heir** , the number of messages and lobbying efforts targeted at him kept growing by the minute. It was a – **BIG** – galaxy, with over a million solar systems, now gathered in about a thousand and some sectors since the Ruusan Reformations. Still, with over a thousand senators, several tens of thousands of petty monarchs, untold millions of titled religious figures and even more untold millions of pettier menial nobles from ' _used-to-be_ ' important ' _somewhat-rich_ ' families, the people suddenly vying for his attention and imprimatur on their projects was, well, _astronomical_. And that was before you had to take into account all the damned companies wanting to sell something to the new Empire's varied ministries. **Blergh!** Flimsiwork galore!

Anakin was certain that spreading _His_ bureaucratic mess towards Vader was _Palpy-Baby_ 's way of punishing him further for not going as deeply **Dark** as fast and thoroughly as the retched old crud wanted him to.

Kreth, the peedunki sleemo could be a pain in Ani's rear when he wanted to make an effort.

The _false-Sith_ looked up to the beautiful rounded domed roofs of the palace, remembering better times and good honest people he had met in these halls. He was so much younger back then. And far less experienced or world-weary than even Tatooine can make a 9 year old. At least back then he didn't have the lawyers, senators and ambassadors to worry about. He almost preferred the Hutts as they at least were honest about their greed, vices and criminality.

Subtly boosting the sound of his breather while modulating the tempo to make it sound as if his breathing was strained by emotion, Anakin – Vader – moved to leave the parked speeder first, making it look as if he were securing the area by the simple act of his fearsome foreboding presence. The crowds stilled and the noise lessened considerably as the Galaxy got a first clear look at the much anticipated ' _Heir of the Emperor_ ' that nobody knew anything about.

Darth Vader was followed out of the speeder by the newly named Moff Panaka, governor of the Chommel sector then a couple of unimportant navy officers and finally the _Emperor of Man_. Vader thought that the name spoke plainly Palpatine's humanocentric misogynistic views and would catch up to him fast enough, despite his fake grand-fatherly presentation. The man was evil and crudely base beneath all that affected cultured comportment. Somebody would see through it at some point and then the ' _fun_ ' would start in earnest.

From the back of the speeder came R2D7, the black and silver astromech beeped softly in forlorn tones as it parked next to Vader, all 4 feet of height polished and buffed to a shine in honor of the dreary celebration to come. Palpatine sneered nastily towards the rolling tin can as his despise of droids and mechanoids was over-passed only by his contempt for xenos and non-humanoid life-forms. In fact, he might prefer the R2 droid to having to deal with colicoids, Killiks, Vratix or other insectoid species as he hated bugs of all sorts too.

In all honesty though, there wasn't much in the known galaxy that Palpatine didn't hate or despise. His preference for humans or the Core worlds were simply established by the fact that he spoke heinously of those subjects less frequently and less venomously than he did for xenos, non-humanoids and worlds located Mid Rim and further. That really wasn't saying much, in truth. Vader was well aware that the man hated truly, passionately and unrestrictedly **EVERYTHING** in the Force's Creation as such hate was the source of the Dark-Side and its fuel. Personal preferences and prejudice had precious little to do with WHY Palpatine hated or scorned any item, creature or concept. He simply wanted fuel for his Darkness and the easiest, cheapest and most sustainable manner was to hate or despise everything, including his own self too.

Putting the emperor out of his mind for now as Palpatine's OCD disposition towards public settings would keep him from acting against Vader for the moment, the newly minted Darth took some time to fortify himself for the appearance of the latest punishment _His Pruneyness_ had inflicted upon his poor, beleaguered person.

 **Jar Jar Binx.**

The bottom-dwelling cockroach had nominated kriffing **Jar Jar Binx** as the new Senator from Naboo in the Imperial Senate to replace his poor deceased wife Padme. Of course, knowing who would replace her in the senate, his dear spouse would probably prefer the peace and solace of Death's Dominion rather than face the reality she had fallen so low in the esteem of Naboo as to be replaced by this circus show bungler. Seeing the robe-clad gungan of his nightmares shuffling besides Boss Nass as they escorted Queen Apailana to give them the official welcome to Theed, Anakin wondered again why he accepted the job as SCIM when he could have retired back to Varykino to build droids in his workshop in anonymous peace for the rest of his life.

Oh, yes! He wanted to help the Galaxy change for the better...

Yeah... His wife's sappy outlook on life had rubbed off on him along the years...

Damn but he'd become a dumb blond bimbo for swallowing that idiocy and then acting on it!

Vader was certain that somewhere, somehow, Padme was laughing herself hoarse at his expense as she watched the scene unfolding in the royal plaza. Traitor! She could _choke_ on it!

Taking his mind off his wayward wife and her humors, Vader concentrated on his emotions so he could start putting out the appropriately dour, sullen and mournful vibes that _His Master_ expected from the damaged, depressed and despondently self-destructive young man. Ani even upped the performance a bit by throwing in a few thoughts about deserving the various pains from his organic remains and the ( _supposedly_ ) ill-fitted prosthetics. He adjusted the sounds from his respirator to be obnoxiously loud, harsh and used the ' _randomizer_ ' function to inflict a plus / minus 3/100 of a second variation in the delay between breaths that the machine took. This minute non-symmetrical change in the rhythm of the breather would jar on the nerves of the people around who would become uneasy at the sound of his machinery but without being able to identify the cause of that negative feeling.

A small bit of mental anguish always makes the Sith happy and well fueled. As long as Palpatine was swamped by the nauseous anxieties, depression and grief of the people on the royal stage near them or in the crowd at large, he had less chance of focusing on Vader's vagaries.

 **Royal Processional**

 _(Star Wars – Lake Varykino)_

 **Day twelve after Mustafar**

 **Royal Plaza**

 **Planet Naboo, Chommel Sector;** _Theed (capital of Naboo)_

The Formal Welcome on Theed Royal Plaza was a _draaaag_.

The benign diplomatic platitudes spoken by the emperor and queen to the holonet crews were a pain in Vader's Katarn-plated ass. Really! He was a warrior and general, not a puppet to put on posters! Why in the clouds of Corellian Hell did they want a damned picture of him? And Palpatine didn't signal that he had the right to say something about Padme, her life, her career or the manner of her passing. The Naberrie family wasn't even present on the Plaza despite it being their daughter going to her rest.

 **He would correct that state of things soon enough.** Let's see the _Old Crud_ try something then!

Finally, Queen Apailana called for the funeral procession to gather and begin the Ceremonial March towards the newly constructed mausoleum where Padme Naberrie, _Good Queen_ Amidala would be laid to rest for eternity amongst the royal elite of Naboo. Anakin wanted to retch. Padme had specifically asked to be buried in her family's private cemetery in Lake Country near Varykino so she could be near her ancestors and relatives when they passed. This blasted ' _royal memorial_ ' was another damned political ploy by Palpatine to ride the coattails of his wife's accomplishments for free instead of doing the honest thing by managing the population like a real monarch instead of acting like a menial provincial tyrant in a backwater shuura fruit country.

The royal palace's great entry doors opened and the floating antigrav sled bearing the crystal casket slowly emerged into the afternoon sunlight. Padme was laid in tranquil repose, her hands joined over her chest as she held a bouquet of snow-blossoms from the mountains near Varykino. They had been her favorite flowers as she grew to adulthood; she always had some in her office to liven up the otherwise dreary suite inside the Senate Rotunda. Then Anakin realized which clothes the body had been dressed with for the funeral.

Her wedding dress.

Palpatine's henchmen had somehow found and appropriated the white lace, gold trimmed custom made dress that had been put in storage in her parents' house. This was another obvious ' _subtle Sith insult_ ' from Palpatine to pound into Anakin's head that his former life was ' **dead and buried** ' ( _or '_ **cremated** _' the bastard would joke_ ). The rumpled old crud had given instructions so that the physical proof of their love and better days be interred with Padme, thus putting an end to his apprentice's **divided loyalties**.

 **Anakin's loyalty had** _NEVER_ **been divided! It was to his** _family_ **and no one else!**

A deep well of _Dark-Side_ rage, contempt and visceral violent turmoil erupted inside Vader, lowering the temperature at three hundred feet around him by several degrees, sending small animals fleeing and making a chill of unnatural fear spread amongst the Nubian royal entourage that escorted Palpatine towards the newly built crypt. Darth Sidious turned his yellowed rheumy eyes back towards his apprentice, wondering what new calamity the younger male would unleash this time on the unsuspecting crowd. As long as he wasn't the victim of another ' _accident_ ', it might even be fun to watch the headless chickens called ' _citizens_ ' fleeing in fright.

Anakin knew he was in trouble if he didn't evacuate some of this instinctive anger and despondency in short order. He had been bottling up his feelings and physical pain for too long already. The last batch of insults and exploitation of his family's tragedy simply wasn't passing down the pipes; it was jammed hard and blocking everything else from flowing where it needed to go. He needed to purge this overflow now or it would blow up at the worse possible moment, not in the controlled manner that he had planned for later.

He was just a **theatrical man-child with diva tendencies** , so _His Master_ said. Who was he, little slave-boy Ani from the backlands of Tatooine, to go against what _His Beloved Master_ had spoken so authoritatively from his _High Throne of Great Authority_?

 _Palpy-Baby_ would rue the day he tried to **un-man** Anakin and reduce his mind and maturity to the level of a mewling infant. If he wanted a babyish slave, then he would get what he paid for!

Vader's great helmet panned left to right, searching until his inhuman eyes caught unto the lightning rod needed to vent his spleen safely while giving a public spectacle that the crowds would remember for the rest of their lives. If _Palpy-Baby_ enjoyed it too, then so much the better.

Now how again did this work? Ah, yesss...

" **Mwu ah ah ah!** Suffer cur! Suffer now the full force of Law and Justice under Imperial Rule!" exulted evilly the dreaded Dark Lord of the Sith in the throes of _Darkness_ , surprising the entire royal entourage and jolting Palpatine _who got high on the sudden_ **Dark-Side** _suffusion in the area_. Darth Vader flared his great black armor-weave cloak as he raised both arms to the sky, a nimbus of purplish lightning forming between his hands. With an aggressive, authoritative gesture, Vader dropped both arms and lined them up towards a bronze statue perched high on a ten foot pedestal in the middle of the boulevard used by the funeral procession.

Instead of the diffused arcing Sith lightning that Palpatine was used to employing and defending against, Vader unleashed twin pulses of condensed, vivid purple, coherent energy. It was the very first public demonstration of the technique ' _Sith Battering Ram_ ' that would forever hence be known as ' _ **The Armored Fist of Vader**_ '.

The offending statue represented the late Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn that fell before the red blades of Darth Maul in the Theed reactor complex fourteen years ago. He had been honored as a hero for the combined peoples of Naboo due to his publicly known actions during the Trade Federation blockade and occupation of the peaceful world. Anakin however still remembered the recorded conversation between the bearded old crud and his lying, _mother-killing apprentice_ Kenobi. The surge of Dark-Side Force as Ani reminisced circulated through him with such strength that it lined his entire form in a grayish nimbus of despair-inducing psychic miasma.

The life-sized bronze construct reacted as if it had suffered the synchronous blasts from the turreted twin e-web blasters mounted on the troop carrier at the rear of the pedestrian procession. The statue's torso deformed as it swelled then exploded catastrophically as it ballooned past the point of structural rupture. The head shot up into the sky in almost a straight line out of sight and took almost six seconds to fall back to the ground as a slagged messy blob. The arms began to to deform and melt along the torso but jettisoned sideways off the statue in half the time it took the thorax to detonate. The entire spectacle was quite showy, with great filaments of molten red-hot bronze arcing through the air around the pedestal in startling contrast to the purplish haze of Force discharges that lined the pieces and shards of the former heroic icon.

Palpatine was experiencing an almost orgasmic reaction to the raw unfettered release of _Dark-Side_ energy at point blank range of his person. He had known that Anakin was powerful but it was now obvious that nobody knew how much. The Jedi must have been constricting him or forbidden him from ever exerting his true potential in public otherwise he would have felt such a raw, organic and visceral usage of the Force from several sectors of space away. What else had his bungling moron of an apprentice been hiding from him?

The royal entourage were flabbergasted that their **Jedi Hero** could suscitate such heinous reaction from the new Heir of the Empire. It bode ill for future relations with Coruscant if there were many other such personal dislikes and vendettas they had not been told about. Several who had met and interacted with Qui-Gon Jinn in his last months of life were irked and displeased at this desecration of their idol but dared not speak up for the dead man when faced with the torrential outpour of Power and Hate from an entity that was still alive and in retaliation distance.

The crowd backed away by a good three full paces when the statue exploded then swelled back forward when the pieces and molten slag had finished falling back to earth. After almost a full minute of silence, there came a ground swell of applause and a loud sustained cheer for the person who just demonstrated what he could do to defend the citizens and allies of the nascent Imperial Society.

 **Darth Vader's accidental tantrum made him look like a Hero in his own right.**

Inside his great helmet, Anakin could only look upon the colored holo-image of the cheering gesticulating crowds with one thought in mind: ' _I went to war and murdered thousands of living people for them? I shouldn't have. They aren't worth it. I just decimated the memory of their icon, spat on the memorial procession and embarrassed the Queen and Emperor like an ill-mannered kid but the fools cheer me on like they won bets on the pod races! Sleemos! They deserve all the Darkness that comes for them!_ '

 **Royal burial**

 _(Star Wars – Lake Varykino)_

 **Day twelve after Mustafar**

 **Nubian Monarchic Estates (** _Royal Cemetery_ **)**

 **Planet Naboo, Chommel Sector;** _Theed (capital of Naboo)_

It was **fugly** ; there was no other name or qualificative for it. And if you could add a few superlatives to that tag, don't be shy about it. The mausoleum designed and built to house his poor dead wife's earthly remains was both a _monumental error_ of architecture and an affront to good taste the worlds over.

 **Vader** scorned it as badly designed and ill-suited for the purpose of publicly exposing the reposing monarch for her admirers and well-wishers. The piece of crap could only have come from the same minds that thought creating TIE-fighters was judicious. It should _**BURN**_!

 **Anakin** loathed the disgusting, disturbing and stunningly repulsive piece of _queerness_ with all his Force-hallowed soul. It was twisted, unnatural and dreary in a way that cast a pall of gloom and chilling _Darkness_ about the entire cemetery as if a place like this needed more negative feelings and misery on top of what it already represented.

The forlorn young widower was glad for his enclosed suit as right now he didn't think he could truly hide what he was or what he felt and thought from _his Master_ even if he made an effort to try. As he beheld the permacrete and durasteel gray masterpiece of the ' **Brutalism** ' architectural style, the young man couldn't help but feel a sense of loss and insult that transcended the simple fact the building was grossly ugly and _in-every-which-way_ against everything his wife ever stood or fought for in her life.

The mausoleum was drab gray like the hull of a fleet battleship instead of pearly white like the other sepulchers in the Monarchic Estates. Just by that coloration, it would have been an eyesore against the background of the area but it wasn't the worst of it. The edifice was actually three times bigger than the next biggest funeral structure in the Estates to the point it was almost a small summer residence like Padme owned at Varykino. The damned thing not only overshadowed all other resting halls in height but dwarfed them in girth and bulk as well. The windows were few; tall narrow colorless affairs more suited as murder-slits on a castle or gunnery ports on a ship's hull than spiritually uplifting decorations of living light and airiness like the stained-glass panels the other memorial structures bore.

Laying his unforgiving gaze upon the great 20 feet high durasteel doors that barred entry into the monument, Vader was irked to see that they had been engraved not with likenesses of Padme or the Royal Naboo Crest as would be proper. No; the designers had instead the gumption, or iconoclasty, to use his wife's place of rest to display the Imperial Crest and the new emblem attributed to the newly renamed ( _what else?_ ) Imperial Senate. The blasted **gear-wheel roundel** was simplistic, ugly and well matched the Brutalistic style of the construct but it wasn't an excuse to smear his dead spouse by trying to imply she had ever supported the damnable creation of the latest galactic tyranny. And she served Naboo and the REPUBLIC, never the Empire!

Stupid, dishonest, _history revisionists_! They would **SUFFER**!

A s he took deep breaths in silence, Anakin was thankful to himself for having had the idea of investing in those new organic lungs. He really appreciated the ability to breathe autonomously and regulate his own emotional transports without the cursed respirator imposing both rhythm and calm onto him. He would probably have a mental melt down before getting inside the building if he didn't have that small bit of control on his own body functions.

The funeral procession had filed into the mausoleum at a painfully slow pace, people subtly jockeying for position and visibility so as to be seen amongst the important, highly stationed elected officials and vitally important loyal bureaucrats of the planet's monarchy. Their most competent, fairest queen was dead but all they thought of was how to get a promotion or a favor by making sure that it was known they had been well placed for the news agencies' cameras during the burial homely.

 **Disrespectful, gormless cads!**

Vader would remember them, indeed! And **horribly deplorable** _accidents_ would follow!

R2D7 beeped softly in sympathy from near his friend. The ceaseless pathetic displays of the organics were really getting to his processors given how the pageantry and pomp were all wasted on a crowd that didn't deserve a micro gram of respect or attention from anybody.

 _(Star Wars – The Imperial March)_

 _His Pruneyness_ now took the podium. It was set up in the air, atop numerous durasteel steps above the marble main floor in a small ' _chaire_ ' like in old temples. The lectern and balustrade were backlit by a disproportionately large octagonal window segmented in three subdivided rings in such a way as to resemble an _eye_. It was a massive 20 foot wide replica of the small portal set in Palpatine's chancellery office behind his desk. Another mark of depravity and ugliness, on top of taking attention away from the coffin's occupant where the focus should be cast. From his high station within the antique architectural device, crafted as meaninglessly ugly as the entire monument, Sidious was elevated two full man-heights above the heads of the crowd who were now forced into looking up to him as unto a benevolent god. The window behind him, set even higher in the wall to give illumination at a descending angle, bathed the _Emperor of Man_ in sunlight, increasing the effect by imitating a halo around his person as it reflected off the shining blackness and purple details of his robes of office.

The entire cavernous hall was almost empty save for a few high balconies, some lighting brackets and many bas-reliefs glorifying the Empire molded into the cheap permacrete of the walls. The building had been designed as a gigantic empty resonance caisse so that any sounds emanating from the area of the podium were refracted by the walls and ceilings to embalm the visitors like the vaporous wafts of smoke from the ritual censers stood by the bier. In such an auditorium, the Sith High Master was a terrifyingly efficient manipulator of opinions and emotions since his vocal modulations and _Dark Force_ emissions were not distorted by the software filters of holonet terminals.

Ani ignored _Palpy-Baby_ as he droned on monotonously about the exaltedness of " _serving the empire in an imperial way so as to serve as a role model and beacon of lawfulness_ " unto the masses. That said masses were sickly, deformed, poor, unwashed, uneducated and mentally defective went unsaid but Vader knew his _Beloved Master_ enough by now to feel the subtle undertones and subtexts when he orated from a podium. How the kriffing fools in the crowd at his feet could swallow any of it without _choking_ on the words was a mystery of the Force he didn't have a prayer of finding an answer to.

Now; it was time for Anakin Skywalker to show **he wasn't dead yet** and would forever more be the one and only **Hero With No Fear** , no matter what Sith poisons, weapons and tortures Sidious tried to use against him and his loved ones.

To the great surprise of everyone in the mausoleum, Darth Vader began to move the very moment that Emperor Palpatine had finished his lengthy ( _and vapid_ ) orison. The tall living stain of blackness moved from his silent guard beneath the ' _chaire_ ' with a mechanical strength and inhuman focus that scared the crowd into parting for him without a sound issuing from his form other than the blasted respirator in his chest plate. Vader had set the noise to be as loud and obnoxious as could be without going into the decibel strengths and frequencies that could cause pain or damage the auditory organs of the listeners. It had to be aggravating and a nerve wrecking background to his speech, nothing more.

The entire crowd roused itself to attention from the standing slumber it had settled into during Palpatine's circuitous verbal pirouettes as they were known to lead nowhere by now. The people were further agitated when Vader pushed through the milling functionaries without a care for their elevated station or ennobled ranks as he marched himself up the five decorative steps that elevated the funeral platform and bier off the main floor in respect for the social station of the deceased. The noise from his armor was also now audible over the hushed whispers of the protesting individuals despite the distance and number of humanoids inside the mausoleum.

Anakin could perform oratory manipulations as well. He had been a general and leader of troops for several years, now; you learned quite few tricks in such circumstances. And the Temple of Jedi's archives had been filled with disused and forgotten manuals about leading either Jedi or forceless soldiers and civilians through adversity just by choosing and presenting words without any _Compulsion_ or _Mind Tricks_ at all to bolster the effects. Any Jedi who became trainer to a padawan Learner was encouraged to search these educational treatises to improve their teaching abilities and general leadership skills so they could be deployed as consuls of the Republic.

 _His Pruneyness_ would get a nasty surprise just now.

"I am **Betraying** you, _My Master_! Could you see it coming from afar? Were your _Force Visions_ powerful and clairvoyant enough to divine this?"

 _(Star Wars – Vader's respirator; magnum voce)_

 **Shooosh.**

"May I have your attention, **please**?" called out the moving nightmare of sculpted black Katarn.

 **Shooosh.**

With nary a sound other than his own horrendous inhuman breathing device filling the sudden void of activity, Vader took place besides the massive crystal covered coffin near the middle of the deceased person's body. He placed his heavy gloved right hand over the transparent panel as if lovingly covering the joined hands of the late Queen Amidala to lend her his respectful, loving support.

The crowd was now interrogative, wondering what was happening and why would this unknown, no matter how high his station or title, presume to touch the Good Queen's bier in such a display. Up on his dais, Darth Sidious was frowning most mightily, trying without success to figure out what calamity the young male would inflict upon his well schemed manipulations so he could cut him off at the pass, so to speak. It looked like he would have a lot of damage to fix later in the evening. " **Damn him!"**

The mechanically amplified bass rumble of Vader's voice rolled over the waiting crowd like a thundercloud, drenching them in cold words that stung like hailstones on bare skin.

 _(Star Wars – Lake Varykino; magnum voce)_

 _(Star Wars – Vader's respirator; background, sotto voce)_

 **Shooosh.**

"Ladies, Gentlemen and Kind Entities"

 **Shooosh.**

"Non-humans, Inhumans, Droids, Sentient Programs and Energy Entities"

 **Shooosh.**

"Soldiers, policemen, militiamen, mercenaries, rent-a-cops and bounty hunters"

 **Shooosh.**

"Informants, snitches, lawyers, betrayers, backstabbers, politicians and _secret spillers"_

 _ **Shooosh.**_

"Bosses, contractors, henchmen and minions"

 **Shooosh.**

"Exalted, Majesties, rich, wealthy, ordinaries, poor, miserable, destitute, menials, dregs of society and refuses of your races, worlds or cities"

 **Shooosh.**

"Be you of the Galactic Empire or Beyond and Elsewhere"

 **Shooosh.**

"The _Late_ Senator of Chommel Sector and the united peoples of planet Naboo would at this time bid you ' **Welcome** ' in her _humble_ place of rest. As was her tradition, deeply rooted in her family history, education and life of public service, the _High Lady_ Padmé Lyra **Skywalker** , _née_ Naberrie, the _Venerable_ Queen _Emeritus_ Amidala, Regnant Monarch of the Naboovian Realm ( _retired_ ), never closed her door nor turned away any who came to her in search of help or guidance. As you are all assembled here today to pray for her peace and a glimmer of her wisdom to guide your own **Path** into the future eddies of the **Living Force's Will** , then I will officially, in her stead, bid you ' **Welcome** ' in these halls of _Peace_ and _Sanctity_."

 **Shooosh.**

 _(Fredreich Chopin – Funeral March)_

"In the names of **OUR** joined bereaved families as they are gathered today in supporting embrace to walk through the gray mists of these sorrows, we thank you all for your support in our moment of mourning for our beloved daughter, sister, wife and mother. The Houses of Skywalker and Naberrie appreciate this kindness beyond words. Please be assured though, that _My_ **Beloved** _Padmé_ would have the words indeed, to publicly **appreciate** the _presence_ and _well wishes_ of each of you to their **full value** if she were here to speak for herself."

 **Shooosh.**

"Whilst the Good Queen Amidala, the benign yet fiercely protective public figure was well known and documented, I cannot in truth _care less_ for the **Icon** and what her removal means for Naboo. I am here today to lament the passing of my dearly beloved friend, sister, **wife and mother of my child** who died before she could complete the birthing."

 **Shooosh.**

"In addition to suffering the innumerable **Betrayals** of the Monks of Jedi which caused her death, she also endured the **personal affronts** inflicted by the **arch-traitor** , Master of the Jedi cult's Grand Council, Obi Wan Kenobi. This slovenly man then compounded his **treason against her** by _destroying my humanity._ Having received such grievous injuries at his fell hands that my life was almost forfeit, I was not able to heal in time to rescue her. I was cast so low, rendered so powerless, that I could not even warn my troops of the 501st Legion to go save my family from the clutches of the depraved cultists who murdered them so basely."

 **Shooosh.**

In the complete fearful silence that filled the crypt, the crowd was listening raptly to the utterly delicious secrets being revealed in public. Similar raptness was upon the crowds gathered outside amongst the tombs and monuments of the Monarchic Estates or upon those trillions of viewers glued to their holo terminals watching the Galactic News. For a first public appearance, the brand new ' **Heir of the Empire** ' was sure making waves of his own!

And who the kreth knew Amidala was married and didn't spill it? Why exactly was such juicy gossip NOT spread around the Senate Rotunda like a cheap whore's affections? Sentients were obviously NOT doing their jobs of digging up and mongering ' _dirt_ ' against the political establishment movers & shakers if this sort of thing could happen in Coruscant's backyard unchecked! A lot of unhappy bosses would be reaming out their hirelings come Nubian nightfall, you could bank on that!

 _(Fredreich Chopin – Funeral March)_

Vader continued his message of great soul wrenching _pathos_ unhindered and uncaring of the states of mind of the gathered peoples, though he could easily ' _hear_ ' them loudly screaming their thoughts at him as if they were broadcasting over subspace comms. His _Beloved Master's_ own successive conniptions as _secrets galore_ were **gratuitously** revealed to the crowds, holonet and Multiverse _Ad Infinitum_ were particularly delectable nuggets of vengeance and **Betrayal** for the young man as he orated most majestically from the funeral platform, giving a prestation on par with any _his Lord_ had ever given in the Senate Hall.

 **Shooosh.**

"I must now face the culmination of my weakness, the proof of my unworthiness as a husband and father. I, born Anakin Skywalker, **defrocked** Master of the Jedi cult's Grand Council, General of the Grand Army of the Galactic Republic, now shed these tears of sorrow for the departed. I lay unto eternal slumber my wife, my better half, the best part of my existence, and our poor innocent child that was never given a chance to even see the sky and stars she was named for."

 **Shooosh.**

"As He that is reborn Vader, Darth amongst the Sith cult, Archiduke of the Galactic Empire of Man, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Militaries, _Heir of Palpatine 1_ _st_ , do I make this solemn promise of Law, Justice, Bloodshed and Vengeance against the cultists of Jedi that have conspired to execute the **Betrayals** that resolved in the extermination of my family and the cessation of my _humanity_."

 **Shooosh.**

"You shall find no Land, planet, moon or sun within the sovereign borders of this Empire, my realm and Heritage, that will ever grant you welcome, support or succor. You shall forever more look over your shoulder in fear of my presence. You shall dread the darkness of the night for it heralds my coming and you shall despise the dawn for it marks yet another day of miserable menial existence in the underbelly of the seediest sewers as you try in vain to escape the reach of my Law, Rule and Justice. In the memories of those Innocents you slew, I so swear by my _Lost, Darkened Soul_!"

 **Shooosh.**

"I now commit to the care of our ancestors these two hallowed souls; my beloved Padmé, my wife, my sister, my friend, the woman who honored me by carrying my unborn daughter whom we had named _Lucia Ameno Naberrie Skywalker_. May the Mothers Moons grant you both light and guidance through the dark night amongst the desert crags and vales that you find sweet waters at the end of the long night."

 **Shooosh.**

 **Revelations of Betrayals and Pains**

 _(Star Wars – Jedi Theme)_

 **Day twelve after Mustafar**

 **Royal Plaza; Royal Palace** _(secret sub-basement)_

 **Planet Naboo, Chommel Sector;** _Theed (capital of Naboo)_

The three very different figures sat cross-legged on the square plushly cushioned poofs that reminded them so much of the meditation benches in the Room of Fountains in the Temple of Light Jedi back on their home world of Coruscant. The sense of familiarity helped to cope with the situation since they could not change it anymore.

The three organic sentients were prisoners, kept deep in a secret underground bunker that had survived unscathed, and undetected, for several generations. If they had not been told, they would not have known. Likewise, the knowledge they were hidden under the massive bulk of the mountain that held aloft the Nubian Royal Palace and its majestic waterfalls had been given to them, unbidden, for purposes unknown.

Their jailer seemed to think it amusing to let them in on the secrets of their jail.

The small organic sentient that watched over them was lithe, spry and athletic, most probably female by the body language and choice of expressions which were usually found amongst the younger females of the populace on Coruscant and the Core Worlds. It was completely impossible to know however since the person always wore extremely loose brown robes with deep cowl hood and long wide sleeves that hid many things along with her hands. The few times they came close to seeing her face when she moved rapidly, almost nervously, showed them that she had a full-face mask or maybe helmet under her hood. It explained the occasional distortions in her voice when she spoke.

At the very least, this jailer came twice per day since they had awoken here, in this dormitory. It was the medical quarantine section of the old forgotten royal bunker that had been built at an epoch whence there was not even a Nubian Royal Palace in place. So very few still knew of its existence; the seated monarch, the handmaidens, a few truly loyal councilors of the crown, a few technicians in charge of maintenance and supplies. Not even three dozen people alive knew this place existed or that it could support life for five years in case of planetary bombardment or atmospheric poisoning.

And now, they did too.

Which was unfortunate for them, they knew quite well. In practice, criminals never reveal their secrets, or even just their existence, unless it doesn't matter anymore. And the most permanent way to make certain it doesn't matter is to kill the people who know.

Hence, truly deplorable situation for them; which they knew.

The three sentients had another thing to look forward to every day on top of the two visits from the jailer. Something simple but vital to know of the outside world. The holonet news. It was the only thing they were allowed to watch. It happened automatically at fixed hours, when the news were fresh of the day, not when they were the sempiternal reruns in-between. So, it the morning and evening, two sessions of 2 hours. Local planetary news followed by Chommel Sector news and then Galactic (now Imperial) news. This was their only link to outside reality; four hours per day, even if they would not have wanted it.

Which makes this afternoon somewhat special. Their jailer had come to them for the midday meal which she never did and then stayed longer than the usual fifteen minutes she normally spent just checking the bunker systems and the safety of the thick blast-proof transparent steel window of the quarantine section. She tested the airlock to make sure it was still off-line and locked from the outside, her side of the armored doors. She may have spent one or two minutes in on-the-fly nasty comments or put-downs against the Jedi cult and its monks but never anything sufficient to determine if they knew her from elsewhere. Today she had stayed. Then she had dropped a remote control from her vast sleeve and activated the holonet display well out of schedule.

She wanted them to see.

They saw.

The Venator-class carrier coming down into the atmosphere, bearing the Imperial roundel on its hull, showing off for all to see who came to visit. Palpatine, Darth Sidious, had come to town for the state funeral of Amidala. They saw from the start the great ship plowing through the clouds, touring the city's airspace, landing in the fields and letting out the imperial processional.

Then, arrived at the Royal Plaza, they saw the _pruney_ countenance of the newly minted ' _Emperor of Man_ ' in all his cowl-robed, cane clutching glory.

"Harken and behold, ye knaves and traitors; my Master, he cometh unto thee!" their small jailer was heard to whisper in glee as the bent form of Palpatine walked towards the Nubian queen, overshadowed by the vast, all-encompassing blackness of his chosen _Heir_ , the Imperial Archiduke Darth Vader.

The three people now knew her allegiance at long last; she was Sith, promised to Sidious so she could raise in power and almight over the masses. She would need to be destroyed so they could escape, but when. And how?

As the royal funeral procession marched, they saw the terrifying power wielded by Darth Vader as he destroyed the memorial of Master Qui-Gon Jinn on the boulevard. The smallest of the three bent low on his poof, holding his head in a weary hand as despair began to seep through even the Force binding devices embedded into the permacrete walls that blocked their _Force-given_ talents from helping them to fight off their captor and escape.

When the procession arrived at the mausoleum they were all awed by the sheer ugliness of the blocky, tacky structure that imperial engineers had assembled. But the scene that would unfold inside would be the most important and determining of the last two weeks.

 **Anakin Skywalker yet lived.**

Even worse for all of them, he was not diminished in either body, mind or Force-gifts and so they had truly failed in their tasks. Darth Sidious still sat on his throne as Grand Master of the Sith and now as Emperor of the Galaxy. Anakin had forsaken his education and faith in the cult of the Light Jedi to descend into Sithdom as Darth Vader and was anointed Heir of the devil as his reward for heralding the destruction of the Republic and the Galaxy with it. And the Child of the prophecy, the supposed Light Reborn that would chase away the darkness so that the suns would shine unchallenged for Eternity had died before even drawing her first autonomous breath in this world.

Their jailer chose their weakest moment of despair to gloat again.

"I told you that my Master was coming, didn't I? He will _enjoy_ his _reunion_ with the three of you in his own time. Until then, I wish you ill health, food poisoning and many nightmares to usher in the ones that you will suffer for real when he finally arrives to claim your demises!"


End file.
